Killing Time

HERE’S AN INTERESTING PIECE ABOUT THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN ALBERT EINSTEIN AND KURT GODEL.

It starts as a rare look at the personalities and personal side of these two great thinkers–as well as many other names familiar from 20th century science.

Among the things it mentions, Einstein liked ice cream cones, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was Godel’s favorite movie, and Alan Turing killed himself by eating a poisoned apple.

But the article moves into theoretical waters, noting the disagreement between Einstein and Godel on the one hand and Werner Heisenber on the other. The subject of dispute: quantum mechanics. (And, frankly, I’m with Einstein and Godel on this one: I’m very suspicious of a lot of the interpretations of reality that are alleged to fall out of quantum mechanics.)

Where the piece ends up, though, is with a long-forgotten piece of collaboration between Einstein and Godel. The author summarizes it this way:

Einstein saw at once that if Gödel was right, he had not merely
domesticated time: He had killed it. Time, "that mysterious and
seemingly self-contradictory being," as Gödel put it, "which, on the
other hand, seems to form the basis of the world’s and our own
existence," turned out in the end to be the world’s greatest illusion.
In a word, if Einstein’s relativity theory was real, time itself was
merely ideal. The father of relativity was shocked. Though he praised
Gödel for his great contribution to the theory of relativity, he was
fully aware that time, that elusive prey, had once again slipped his
net.

But now something truly amazing took place: nothing. Although in the
immediate aftermath of Gödel’s discoveries a few physicists bestirred
themselves to refute him and, when this failed, tried to generalize and
explore his results, this brief flurry of interest soon died down.
Within a few years the deep footprints in intellectual history traced
by Gödel and Einstein in their long walks home had disappeared,
dispersed by the harsh winds of fashion and philosophical prejudice. A
conspiracy of silence descended on the Einstein-Gödel friendship and
its scientific consequences.

Until Stephen Hawking took up the subject again.

GET THE STORY.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin