February 09, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Moritz Schlick Assassinated
So the ground work was laid for Kurt Gödel.
Gödel once stated, “mathematical logic is a science prior to all
others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences.”
I always thought that it was mathematics that was the most
fundamental of all sciences since physics rests on it.
Gödel went one step further.
He was just 20 then (1926).
With the arrival of 1930s and the fascism in Germany, the
atmosphere was getting suffocated and most members of the Vienna Circle were
fleeing off to the United States and the United Kingdom.
As the others fled to the West for their lives, Schlick stayed
back in the University of Vienna.
That was a mistake.
Germany and Europe had become the abode of absolute evil.
On June 22, 1936 as Schlick was descending one of the central
staircases of the University, he was shot at point blank range by a former
student Johann Nelböck.
All the four bullets struck him in the chest killing him almost
instantly.
Schlick died, but his ideas and the great minds that he inspired
went to discover and present us with great ideas.
Another personality who would firmly set the future of Gödel in
firm sand was David Hilbert.
Hilbert as you know was obsessed with the perfectness and completeness
of mathematics.
Hilbert vehemently wanted mathematics to be formulated on a solid
and complete logical foundation.
Kurt Gödel attended a lecture in Bologna, Italy where Hilbert
reiterated his ideas or goals that go by the name of Hilbert’s Program.
Hilbert was deeply insecure and unhappy with the inconsistencies
and paradoxes that riddled mathematics particularly that arose from the work of
Cantor.
So much was he unnerved by the paradoxes and inconsistencies that
Hilbert declared it as the Foundational Crisis of Mathematics.
So to overcome his self-declared foundational crisis, Hilbert
proposed a research project in 1920 that goes by the name of Hilbert’s Program.
Its aim was to formulate mathematics on a solid and totally
complete logical foundation.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
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