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Reading articles and books with the subtext of "what Gödel REALLY meant was..." reminds me a lot of literary criticism, in that it doesn't really matter what th
by alasdair_ 8y ago
Reading articles and books with the subtext of "what Gödel REALLY meant was..." reminds me a lot of literary criticism, in that it doesn't really matter what the original author REALLY meant any more - what's far more interesting is how the author's ideas affected the thinking of others and how much those people will argue about how their interpretation is the only true one.
- throwawaymath 8y agoWhat? No, it's math. Theorems are not up to interpretation, emphatically and by design. That's the purpose of math. Gödel's theorems are profoundly interesting in their own right. They also required significant creativity and ingenuity for their time. But if there are conflicting "interpretations" of what they "actually mean", then that means most must be incorrect (or more charitably, extremely incomplete). Frankly I'm flabbergasted you would compare (mis)interpretations of mathematical theorems to the legitimate subjectivity inherent to literary criticism...
- alasdair_ 8y agoNote that I said “reading articles” about what Godel really meant, not “reading agodel’s papers” - the point was that once we become that far removed from the underlying work and start mostly talking about individual people’s interpretation of that work as the focal point of the article, it reminds me of literary criticism more than anything else. Additionally, interpretations are always subjective because interpretation of something is unique to an individual subjective viewpoint.