from the latest issue of discover….

1) “Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.”

– the ever-quotable Benjamin Disraeli.

2) “But the real relevance of Godel’s theorem is its connection to the fact that inconsistencies can arise if you try to prove statements that refer to themselves. One of the most famous of these is the assertion ‘This statement is false.’ If the statement is true, then according to the statement itself, the statement is false. But if the statement is false, then the statement must be true. Since we are not angels who view the universe from the outiside, we– and our theories– are both part of the universe we are describing, and hence our theories are self-referencing. And so one might expect that they, too, are either inconsistent or incomplete.”

– Stephen Hawking, discussing his recent acceptance that there may be no single ultimate unifying theory.

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 @ 8:39 pm General, Science
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