Augustine Pamplany CST

Kurt Friedrich Gödel (1906-1978)born in Austria, was a great logician, mathematician, and philosopher. He is one of the most significant logicians in history who has contributed immensely to the scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century. Born of catholic father and protestant mother, he was raised protestant.He was called the Mr Why at home because of his intense curiosity. He figures in the 2008 BBC documentary titled Dangerous Knowledge. In Princeton he made friendship with Einstein. According to Economist Oskar Morgenstern, toward the end of his life Einstein said that his “own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely … to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel.” Freeman Dyson, a renowned physicist, says that Gödel was “the only one who walked and talked on equal terms with Einstein.” Certain thinkers consider Gödel’s intellect to be subtler than Einstein’s in philosophy.

When the acclaimed intelligentsia of the 20th Century like Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert and others were relying on logic and set theory to develop a perfect axiom to act as the foundation of all mathematics, Gödel came up with a project that completely invalidates any such attempt at all. At the age of 25 Gödel published his renowned incompleteness theorems. The first theorem states that for any self-consistent axiomatic system there are propositions that are true but not provable within the system. He also developed the Gödel numbering, a technique used to prove his theorem.

Gödel was a frim theist. He believed in a personal God. He said: “Einstein’s religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza’s god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person.”

Gödel assumed that time travel is theoretically possible. He describes time as “that mysterious and seemingly self-contradictory being.” His reflections on afterlife gives some clue to the relation between time and God. “Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today’s science and received wisdom haven’t any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology.” Gödel wrote: It is “possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning” that it “is entirely consistent with known facts.” “If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife].”

Gödel described his religion as “baptized Lutheran. My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza.” As regards religions he said, “Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not.” His wife Adele states, “Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning.” Gödel also developed an ontological proof for the existence of God in line with the argument of St Anselm of Canterbury.