Godel notes

=== forum posts ===
http://goodmath.scientopia.org/2010/05/03/the-danger-when-you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know/
Actually, there are equivalent of Godel's theorems for physical laws, see :
Physical limits of inference, Wolpert D, Physica D 237 (2008) 1257-1281
Philosophy of science: Theories of almost everything, P.-M. Binder, Nature 455 (2008), 884-885
The idea is very similar to Godel's proof : you define "inference device" which are basically physical theories, and then you show that for some families of inference devices, some laws can not be inferred (basically, as I understand it, they can not infer themselves, very classically). There are interesting results : just like there is a universal Turing machine, there is a unique universal inference device (i.e. one single "theory of everything"). Actually, it seems David Wolpert calls that a " monotheism theorem".
I summarized this in French here : http://tomroud.com/2008/11/04/le-demon-de-laplace-et-la-theorie-du-presque-tout/
By the way, I find it quite fascinating to see how people remember the contribution of Godel but not Turing's, who was one of the major player of this field.
Category:Godel