Related papers: Uncertainty, incompleteness, chance, and design
In 1927 Heisenberg discovered that the ``more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa''. Four years later G\"odel showed that a finitely specified, consistent formal…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems have the same scientific status as Einstein's principle of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Watson and Crick's double helix model of DNA. Our aim is to discuss some new faces of the…
Incompleteness theorems of Godel, Turing, Chaitin, and Algorithmic Information Theory have profound epistemological implications. Incompleteness limits our ability to ever understand every observable phenomenon in the universe.…
In the past century many fundamental results on unpredictability, undecidability and uncertainty have compelled scientists to grapple with the idea that some questions may never be resolved within our current theories. While this…
In this paper we prove Chaitin's ``heuristic principle'', {\it the theorems of a finitely-specified theory cannot be significantly more complex than the theory itself}, for an appropriate measure of complexity. We show that the measure is…
Recent work by Faizal et al. (2025) claims that G\"odelian undecidability of non-algorithmic truths in our universe imply the impossibility of a formal, algorithmic simulation of the universe. This paper clarifies the distinction between…
Transcript of G.J. Chaitin's 2 March 2000 Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Distinguished Lecture. The notion of randomness is taken from physics and applied to pure mathematics in order to shed light on the…
G\"odel's first and second incompleteness theorems are corner stones of modern mathematics. In this article we present a new proof of these theorems for ZFC and theories containing ZFC, using Chaitin's incompleteness theorem and a very…
In light of G\"{o}del's undecidability results (incomplete theorems) for math, quantum indeterminism indicates that physics and the Universe may be indeterministic, incomplete, and open in nature, and therefore demand no single unification…
Despite provable unknowables in recursion theory, indeterminism and randomness in physics is confined to conventions, subjective beliefs and preliminary evidence. The history of the issue is very briefly reviewed, and answers to five…
There are many ways we can not know. Even in systems that we created ourselves, as, for example, systems in mathematical logic, Go\"edel and Tarski's theorems impose limits on what we can know. As we try to speak of the real world, things…
General relativity treats spacetime as dynamical and exhibits its breakdown at singularities. This failure is interpreted as evidence that quantum gravity is not a theory formulated within spacetime; instead, it must explain the very…
This paper presents a theory of systemic undecidability, reframing incomputability as a structural property of systems rather than a localized feature of specific functions or problems. We define a notion of causal embedding and prove a…
If the quantum mechanical description of reality is not complete and a hidden variable theory is possible, what arises is the problem to explain where the rates of the outcomes of statistical experiments come from, as already noticed by…
Quantum theory is notoriously counterintuitive, and yet remains entirely self-consistent when applied universally. Here we uncover a new manifestation of its unusual consequences. We demonstrate, theoretically and experimentally (by means…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
Heisenberg's uncertainty relation is commonly regarded as defining a level of unpredictability that is fundamentally incompatible with the deterministic laws embodied in classical field theories such as Einstein's general relativity. We…
The problematic relationship between science and philosophy has, since the beginning of modernity, divided the world into two separate domains: nature and human. Some of today's schools of philosophy and epistemological inquiry have…
The aim of this paper is to argue that the (alleged) indeterminism of quantum mechanics, claimed by adherents of the Copenhagen interpretation since Born (1926), can be proved from Chaitin's follow-up to Goedel's (first) incompleteness…