Nils Roeller on Wed, 9 Jul 1997 09:56:50 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> Goedel - a nomadic case study |
Nils Roeller* Goedel - a nomadic case study Napoleon realized the strategic importance of officers skilled in mathematics and so he was eager to found the Ecole Polytechnique. Hitler was different. He concentrated on a stupid, cold and bloody Lebensraum instead of recognising that, in the small town of Goettingen, German mathematicians had already been successful in opening spaces that were waiting to be inhabited, like the flexible Riemann-space and the friendly Hilbert-space. Not seeing the opportinities that mathematics offered was one reason for losing the war. He and the Nazis pushed mathematicians out of Germany or murdered them. At the same time American and British politicians were engaging people like the computer-builder, John von Neumann or Alan Turing, the computer-thinker, to join their war-committees in the speeding up of research into war technology . The case of Kurt Goedel is very different. Called the second genius in logic after Aristoteles, he left the German sphere of totalitarism because he didn't want to serve in the German army. Together with Adele - a girl that worked in the nightspot “Der Nachtfalter" (Vienna) - he emigrated via Siberia and Japan to America. His thinking on life, religion and politics is now accessible in the book, “A logical jouney", by Hao Wang. In a small note on page 4, one gets a hint that mathematical thinking argues for non-conformity. The basis for this is that a society, ruled by mechanical laws and orders, will not be able to solve certain problems of vital importance. This can be deduced from the famous Goedel theorem “GT1: Any consistent formal theory of mathematics must contain undecideable propositions" and GT3: "No formal system of mathematics can be both consistent and complete" (Wang, 3). Hao Wang offers (with humourous repetitions) insights in the life and work of Goedel who refused to be engaged in research for war technology. He concentrated on mathematics, living with Adele in Princeton and chatting with Einstein. The text serves as a good introduction to the nomadic jargon of mathematics (Deleuze/Guattari). Hao Wang: A logical jouney - From Gödel to Philosophy. Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press * Inspired by Otto E. Roessler and discussions with Kerstin Bergmann, Anthony Moore and Evelyn Mund. Nils Röller Accademy of Media Arts Peter-Welter-Platz 2 50676 Cologne 0049 - 221 - 20189- 226 Fax : 17 --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de