| Re: Consistency & Completeness -
09-04-2006, 06:35 AM
I disagree about the incompleteness theorem placing a limit on knowledge. It places a limit on what can be proved by demonstration, but true knowledge, as Aristotle put it, is identical with its object, not a matter of manipulating formal axiomatic systems.
But I agree it's an important issue for any TOE. A TOE cannot be complete and consistent. Hawking's argues physics cannot be completed for this reason (online essay 'Godel and the End of Physics). Therefore, if a complete (or fundamental) TOE is possible the universe must have an inconsistent description. The mystics claim that this is the case, and so it seems to me that theirs is the only worldview in which a complete TOE is possible.
Could you say some more about Nagarjuna's four fold logic? I know his theory of emptiness via the 'Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way' but not this. |