Zusammenfassung
In his Kurt Gödel Award 2021 essay, “The Philosophical Meaning of the Gödel Universe,” Prof. Kahle takes a fresh look at the philosophical ramifications of Gödel’s cosmology and helps clarify what Gödel’s intentions were and what the significance is of his arguments. I have several reservations, however, concerning Kahle’s discussion which will be discussed in this essay.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
John Dawson (1997, 92).
- 2.
Hao Wang (1996, 88).
- 3.
Solomon Feferman (1986, 13 f.).
- 4.
John S. Bell (1989, 77).
- 5.
Gödel (1946/9-B2, 245–246); brackets added.
- 6.
Hans Reichenbach (1969).
- 7.
Wang (1996, 307).
- 8.
Feferman, op. cit., 14.
- 9.
Manchak (2016, 1053).
- 10.
Comment by the editors: Reinhard Kahle acknowledges this point and suggests that “seemingly” expresses the intended meaning of the German “scheinbar” better than the expression “apparently”. He also points out that his text contains a question mark here (“only apparent?”).
- 11.
Feferman (1998, 159).
- 12.
Hao Wang (1974, 9 f.).
- 13.
Indeed, arguably, even Einstein failed to make that distinction. He remarked, as Gödel did, that in STR, there is no such thing as a nonrelative, global notion of simultaneity, but insisted, nevertheless (contra Gödel), that “the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated.” (Einstein 1961, 150)
- 14.
Karl Popper (1976, 129–130).
- 15.
Wang (1996, 320).
- 16.
Op. cit., 230.
- 17.
Op. cit., 230; 257–258.
- 18.
Op. cit. 230.
- 19.
Comment by the editors: Reinhard Kahle acknowledges this point. In fact, the English translation might be ambiguous here and he rather meant to express that the argument seems unfounded to him.
- 20.
Carlo Rovelli (1995, 82).
- 21.
Op. cit., 84.
- 22.
Op. cit., 86.
- 23.
Op. cit., 86.
- 24.
Gö95, 258, footnote 28.
- 25.
Steven Savitt (1994, 468).
- 26.
Manchak (2016, 1052).
- 27.
Lawrence Sklar (1984, 106).
- 28.
John Earman (1995,198).
- 29.
Manchak (2016, 1054).
- 30.
Quoted in David Malament (1976, 322).
- 31.
One needs to add this caveat, since it remains a debated issue whether the becoming or lapsing of time is consistent with—even, for some, is a direct consequence of—the STR.
- 32.
Manchak, op. cit., 1053. Manchak reminds us that “even late in his life, Gödel had still not given up on the possibility that we inhabit a Gödel-type model. Indeed, he would remain intensely interested in the collection of all astronomical data relevant to this possibility ...” (1052) Just how interested can be gleaned from the fact that Gödel’s biographer, John Dawson, was astonished to find in Gödel’s Nachlass two notebooks containing detailed calculations concerning the angular orientation of galaxies.
- 33.
We, in turn, must be cautious here. In the context of his writings on relativity, Gödel adopted a realist perspective with regard to space-time. Fundamentally, however, we know that his primary allegiance was to Leibniz, who was an idealist with regard to space and time. Interestingly, however, Gödel’s writings on Kant far exceed his discussions of Leibniz. Indeed, “I have never attained anything definite,” Gödel said, “on the basis of reading Leibniz. Some theological and philosophical results have just been suggested [by his work]. One example is my ontological proof [of the existence of God].” (Wang 1996, 87)
- 34.
Wang (1996, 235); 6; brackets added.
- 35.
A subsection of Chap. 5 in Yourgrau (1999) is entitled, “Gödel’s Theorem and Gödel’s Cosmology: Mathematical Realism versus Temporal Idealism” and Chap. 7 in Yourgrau (2005) is entitled, “The Scandal of Big ‘T’ and Little ‘t’,” where big T is truth, with respect to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and little t is time, with respect to Gödel’s results on relativity.
- 36.
Wang (1996, 83); brackets added.
- 37.
Savitt, op. cit., 469–470.
Literatur
Bell, J. S. (1989). How to teach special relativity. In J. S. Bell (Ed.), Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics (pp. 67–80). Cambridge University Press.
Dawson, J. (1997). Logical dilemmas: The life and work of Kurt Gödel. A K Peters.
Earman, J. (1995). Bangs, crunches, whimpers, and shrieks: Singularities and acausalities in relativistic spacetimes. Oxford University Press.
Einstein, A. (1961). Relativity: The special and general theory. Crown (Transl. by R. W. Lawson).
Feferman, S. (1986). Gödel’s life and work. In S. Feferman, J. W. Dawson Jr., S. Kleene, G. Moore, R. Solovay, & J. van Heijenoort (Eds.), Kurt Gödel: Collected works: Volume I: Publications 1929–1936 (Vol. 1, pp. 1–36). Oxford University Press.
Feferman, S. (1998). In the light of logic (pp. 150–164). Oxford University Press.
Gödel, K. (1946/9-B2). Some observations about the relationship between theory of relativity and Kantian philosophy. In S. Feferman, J. W. Dawson Jr., W. Goldfarb, C. Parsons, & R. Solovay (Eds.), Kurt Gödel: Collected works: Volume III: Unpublished essays and lectures (Vol. 3, pp. 230–259). Oxford University Press (1995).
Gödel, K. (1949). A remark about the relationship between relativity theory and idealistic philosophy. In P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-scientist (pp. 555–562). Harper & Row.
Hawking, S. W. (1992). Chronology protection conjecture. Physical Review D, 46(2), 603–611. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.46.603.
Malament, D. (1976). Review: L. Sklar, space, time, and space-time. The Journal of Philosophy, 73(11), 306–323. https://doi.org/10.2307/2025892.
Manchak, J. B. (2016). On Gödel and the ideality of time. Philosophy of Science, 85(5), 1050–1058. https://doi.org/10.1086/687937.
Popper, K. (1976). Unended quest: An intellectual autobiography. Fontana books 4416. Open Court.
Reichenbach, H. (1969). Axiomatization of the theory of relativity. University of California Press (Transl. by M. Reichenbach).
Rovelli, C. (1995). Analysis of the distinct meanings of the notion of “time” in different physical theories. Il Nuovo Cimento B (1971–1996), 110(1), 81–93.
Savitt, S. F. (1994). The replacement of time. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72(4), 463–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409412346261.
Sklar, L. (1984). Comments on Malament’s “‘time travel” in the Gödel universe’. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 106–110.
Wang, H. (1974). From mathematics to philosophy. Library of philosophy and scientific method. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Wang, H. (1996). A logical journey: From Gödel to philosophy. MIT Press.
Yourgrau, P. (1999). Gödel meets Einstein: Time travel in the Gödel universe. Open Court.
Yourgrau, P. (2005). A world without time: The forgotten legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Basic Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Der/die Autor(en), exklusiv lizenziert an Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, ein Teil von Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yourgrau, P. (2023). Gödel’s Temporal Idealism: A Reply to Prof. Kahle. In: Passon, O., Benzmüller, C., Falkenburg, B. (eds) On Gödel and the Nonexistence of Time – Gödel und die Nichtexistenz der Zeit. Springer Spektrum, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-67045-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-67045-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer Spektrum, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-67044-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-67045-3
eBook Packages: Life Science and Basic Disciplines (German Language)