Dangerous Knowledge?

[dalriada]

If you can get BBC 4, this sounds like an excellent programme:
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DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

Wednesday 8 August 2007 10.05pm-11.35pm; rpt 2.05am-3.35am (signed); rpt Thursday 16 August 1am-2.30am (Wednesday night)


In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.
"MY BEAUTIFUL PROOF
LIES ALL IN RUINS"
Presenter David Malone reads letters which demonstrate Cantor's crumbling self-belief.
Watch a clip from Dangerous Knowledge

Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.

Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.

The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.

Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documen...nowledge.shtml

[bindeweede]

Well, I'm setting the video to record it. Not being a mathematician, I hope it won't be too far above my head, as I fear I have to confess, Cuddles' explanation of quantum mechanics was.

But I did try.???

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Sadly, I shan't be able to watch it- no TV.

I'm not a mathematician either-but anything that puts across what Gödel actually said as opposed to what the internet trolls say he said is welcome.

One point that surprised me in the blurb is the suggestion that Alan Turing's death was somehow attributable to his genius. The standard view, as far as I know, is that he was deeply depressed at the treatment he suffered because of his homosexuality, and particularly by his exclusion from part of the work that he loved:

http://www.turing.org.uk/bio/part8.html

[MRT]

The word dangerous in the title of the programme is not so much to do with the fate of the scientists themselves as the knowledge they uncovered. They all came across examples of uncertainty - limits to our knowledge that could never be breached no matter how much information we aquire. It is a defining characteristic of science that it accepts uncertainty and the fact that some things can never be known. Certainty is, on the other hand, characteristic of some belief systems. The knowledge was therefore dangerous both to those belief systems and our own general peace of mind. As a result the people involved were often not popular which may have led to their fate.

[Zaira]

Forgive my presumptions but this makes so much sense to me. I believe it to be the same type of thing I experienced personally - in a much smaller way of course.

I am not well educated but I love to read and I made lots of discoveries that lead me to think about things in a deeper, and sometimes overwhelming, way. I tried to share my discoveries but soon realised that I was considered a 'bit weird'. Nevertheless, a few years go by and then I am reading about the very things I tried to talk to people about.

I can understand how frustrated David Malone, George Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing must have felt. Something like the frustration some of you feel on here when trying to explain something that seems simple to you and yet the other person just doesn't seem to get it.

I too became very frustrated and very disillusioned with the world and believed, and still do believe, that there is so much more going on out there than we are capable of understanding. I too got rather depressed, even to the extend of destroying a lot of my books because I wondered what the point of it all was. Why did I feel so driven to find out about these things if I had no one to share them with. There were times when I thought my head would explode. Suicide? It crossed my mind. But instead I decided to put the books away and concentrate on bringing up my family.

The world wide web re-opened many doors for me. Still frustrated and disillusioned but now I have somewhere to go with my questions and my little discoveries.

I wonder what David Malone, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing would have made of all this technology.

[median]

It is a defining characteristic of science that it accepts uncertainty and the fact that some things can never be known. Certainty is, on the other hand, characteristic of some belief systems

Agreed, although there will always be a continuing drive of wanting to know

Sadly I cannot receive BBC4 but David Malone contributes to the Aug edition of New Scientist.

One quote is 'Perhaps it's time for us to finally accept that we shouldn't believe in science because we thinks it's certain, but precisely because it is not'

Quite ???

[Dr B]

I too became very frustrated and very disillusioned with the world and believed, and still do believe, that there is so much more going on out there than we are capable of understanding.

I agree totally. The difference is we think there is alot out there which is currently 'unknown' - which is true of coruse - but that once we look at it - we can have some confuidence in our capacity to learn and understand. Many people think the 'unknown' is a magical place where we do not have the capacity to even fathom what is happening. The latter view will always doom you to failure. Paranormal ideas often hide out in this view - it goes somthing like - "we do not know everything, therefore the paranormal could exist"

This is of course, a logical fallacy. 8)

In fact a close look at the logical structure of knowedge and understanding would be very useful here. Logic clearly states that we will never have a 'gods eye view' of things - in other words our knowledge will never be complete on everything. However, that does not undermine science - which, while acknowledging this, also notes that it is in the attempt of trying to understand more and more, than we learn in the first place.

You may shoot for the moon and you may fall short - but better to shoot for that goal than an easily attainable one . You can still learn from a journey that did not reach its full destination - if you know how to of course.

I would recommend to anyone on this to read up on the philosophy of science. Read the stuff of karl Popper, Kant and Hume. Read up on the sociology of scientific knowledge. Read up on critical thinking and how science does, what it does.

The theoretical framework of science must be understood before one can truly appreciate the real benefits of any knowledge and understanding it provides (or not as the case may be). It is, alas, the one area neglected by the general public and it has to be said - many scientists as well.....

[Zaira]

Thank you for that. I will check out your recommendations. I would just like to comment on something I came across a few times while reading. Forgive my lack of links and references, don’t have them to hand at the moment.

Not sure I can explain this properly but let me try…

I have read of great scholars who have become discouraged and disillusioned with… something in this world. Something they discovered. They were seekers of knowledge and great thinkers. Many commit suicide or simply become recluses. In short they seem to have come to the end of their rope. Come to the end of their research and give the impression that they have discovered something that should never be talked about. In a sense, like man just isn’t ready for it.

Sorry to be so vague but I just wondered if you had ever come across anything like that?

[bindeweede]

Well, I'm setting the video to record it. Not being a mathematician, I hope it won't be too far above my head, as I fear I have to confess, Cuddles' explanation of quantum mechanics was.

But I did try.???

I found it an excellent and fascinating, if lengthy programme. There wasn't a lot of "real" maths to put the non-specialist off, but it did attempt to explain the various theories those people were working on, and how their almost obsessions eventually took their lives, one way or another.

One of the many things I didn't know was that in the early 1950's, Turing was regarded as a threat to national security because of his homosexuality, and the Government decided to chemically castrate him by injecting oestrogen. I would be very surprised if that did not have something to do with his suicide.

Thank goodness the world has moved on - well parts of it have.