Some of you may have already heard this anecdote, repeated this week in the New Yorker, about mathematician Kurt Gödel, but it's too good not to mention anyway. (The article also gives you another chance to try to understand his incompleteness theorems. I got about 20 per cent of it this time).
"So naďve and otherworldly was the great logician that Einstein felt obliged to help look after the practical aspects of his life. One much retailed story concerns Gödel’s decision after the war to become an American citizen. The character witnesses at his hearing were to be Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern, one of the founders of game theory. Gödel took the matter of citizenship with great solemnity, preparing for the exam by making a close study of the United States Constitution. On the eve of the hearing, he called Morgenstern in an agitated state, saying he had found an “inconsistency” in the Constitution, one that could allow a dictatorship to arise. Morgenstern was amused, but he realized that Gödel was serious and urged him not to mention it to the judge, fearing that it would jeopardize Gödel’s citizenship bid. On the short drive to Trenton the next day, with Morgenstern serving as chauffeur, Einstein tried to distract Gödel with jokes. When they arrived at the courthouse, the judge was impressed by Gödel’s eminent witnesses, and he invited the trio into his chambers. After some small talk, he said to Gödel, “Up to now you have held German citizenship.”
No, Gödel corrected, Austrian.
“In any case, it was under an evil dictatorship,” the judge continued. “Fortunately that’s not possible in America.”
“On the contrary, I can prove it is possible!” Gödel exclaimed, and he began describing the constitutional loophole he had descried. But the judge told the examinee that “he needn’t go into that,” and Einstein and Morgenstern succeeded in quieting him down. A few months later, Gödel took his oath of citizenship."
Posted by Alan Allport at February 24, 2005 01:52 PMSpeaking of incompleteness, why don't they tell us what was the inconsistency?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 24, 2005 02:13 PMThat's always the problem with articles like this and popularizations of science in general. It's always assumed that non-specialists can't get the math, and without the math it all becomes hopelessly vague.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at February 24, 2005 03:32 PMSounds like the authors thought the text of the U.S. Constitution, never mind yer fancy theorems, was too complicated for readers of the New Yorker.
...so I got out The Years With Ross to find grist with which to deplore the decay of standards at a great American institution in light of the above and instead ran into this:
The prospectus had declared, 'The New Yorker will be what is commonly called sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers.' Ross found it hard to keep in mind this assumption of enlightenment, and sometimes seemed to be editing Talk [Of The Town] for a little boy or an old lady whose faculties were dimming. When I used axe-haft, Ross followed it, in parentheses, with 'the haft is the handle of the axe.' His profound uneasiness in the presence of anything smacking of scholarship or specialized knowledge is perpetuated in dozens of small changes he made in my copy. In the following excerpt from a Talk piece, which I wrote after a visit to the Metropolitan Museum, I have italicized his insertions: 'For those who exclaim over armour, a thing pretty rare with us, the three new suits the museum has just come by will prove enthralling. One of them, a richly ornamented Spanish war harness, has more pieces of réchange, or you might say accessories, than any other battle suit in the world.... Among other prizes of the New Accession Room is the lid of an amphora, but we never did find out what an amphora is." In another Talk item about the demands upon his hosts of the difficult and imperious Count Keyserling, I wrote that he had to have, around midnight, after his lecture, 'champagne or claret,' and Ross had to explain to his sophisticated readers that claret was 'French red wine,' so they would not confuse it with its prize-ring meaning of 'blood.'...Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 24, 2005 08:45 PM
Have you considered that perhaps the specifics of Gödel’s constitutional loophole have been lost to history? It doesn't sound as if any of the witnesses were excited about him harping on the details.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 24, 2005 09:31 PMConsidered it, sure, but, dammit, there's got to be a punch line in this story somewhere.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 24, 2005 11:23 PMThe story is probably bullshit
Posted by: Titus at September 1, 2005 01:35 PM