h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

By axiomatic logic then, yes, there are unanswerable questions, as proved by Bertrand Russell.

Strictly speaking, this applies to mathematics, but Science is only applied mathematics, after all.

B

Something like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem?

Yes. I'd have to look it up, but my recollection is that Russell's proof destroyed the life's ambition's of another mathematician for unified mathematics - I could have sworn it was Godel.

B

You're getting two similar things mixed up. Russell found a mistake in Frege's system intended to axiomatise mathematics, but that didn't prove it wasn't possible to do it. Godel later proved that there would always be unprovable statements in any mathematical system, destroying Hilbert's 'formalist' programme for mathematics - the idea of finding a small set of axioms and showing that every statement could be proved true or false just using the axioms.

So does that mean the answer the my question is - 'Yes.' ?

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whats in my pocket, precious????

I´d imagine we may never know what caused our laws of nature to be what they are.

I blame 2legs.

B

Hokey Pokey:
1. A circle dance with a synchronised shaking of the limbs in turn accompanied by a simple song.
2. Hocus Pokus - trickery.
3. A dated ice cream sold on the street, esp by Italian street vendors.
That's my dictionary.

1a. The words of the song go Put your right arm in, take your right arm out, put your right arm in and shake it all about. ...Left arm... r leg...l leg ...and do the hokey pokey
3a. Hokey pokey Is an ice cream in NZ. creamy, with crunchy bits in, similar to cinder taffee.

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Are there any questions that science CAN NEVER answer?

Is science advancing exponentially? if so, there's your answer.
Understanding it has always been beyond most of the population (especially the elderly dammit) from the year dot...

Editit
Hokey Cokey is the dance I used to do

Questions to do with chaotic systems.
Will it being raining in exactly 1,000 years time. It certainly sounds like a scientific question but because weather patterns are chaotic it is impossible to answer a question like that.

Clive - it depends what you mean by 'question'.

And answer.

I mean, in mathematics we know that the 'continuum hypothesis' cannot be proved true or false. Does that mean we don't know whether it is true or false, or that we can choose it to be true or false, or that true and false don't quite apply there? (My vote is for the last option, but people make strong cases for all three.)

So we could say that we don't have an answer to the question of the truth of the continuum hypothesis - or we could say that we do have an 'answer', but an answer to a slightly different and better question. And there's a definite sense in which science is about asking better questions as well as getting better answers.

An easier route might be sigsfried's suggestion of chaotic systems. Or even easier - randomness at a quantum level. Set up a quantum system where there are two possible observable states, equally likely. On any given trial, no way to predict which event will happen.

Although maybe that's like the maths one - the 'answer' is that the question is wrong - you shouldn't ask which one will happen, you should ask the probability of each event (which you can compute).

I can think of a question science can't anwer.

Define 2legs

Degenerate matter...

There you go MP.

t.

"An easier route might be sigsfried's suggestion of chaotic systems. Or even easier - randomness at a quantum level. Set up a quantum system where there are two possible observable states, equally likely. On any given trial, no way to predict which event will happen."

I dislike the Quantum Suggestion because some of the resolutions to the measurement problem may get rid of the random part so given that in the future science might well change I wouldn't want to say can *NEVER* answer. The properties of the Chaotic system like the one I suggested I feel is on safer grounds because of what we understand about Chaos most of which has been mathematically proved.

>>I wouldn't want to say can *NEVER* answer.<<

No me neither, precisely why I wanted to ask this here.

I think chaotic systems is a good one - it's on the list.

Can I just remind everyone the stipulation is meant to be the average disinterested 16 year old. Yes I - we know - the knotty issue of the measurement problem of incompleteness theorems in number theory: valid suggesstions all but I still need to pitch it to that audience on the back of a leflet about yea' big |----|

Weather forecasting in that regard is probably a good thing then, after all it is something we all deal with on a day to day basis. If you have the opportunity for a demo then the double pendulum is always a good one as well

>>Weather forecasting in that regard is probably a good thing then<<

Precisely what I was thinking.

Plus I can find the clip art to go with it - and it will go nicely onto a panel with a bit of verbage.

Alas, this is a theoretical exercise - so no practical but what is the double pendulum experiment when it is a home?

why do people touch things with "wet paint" signs on them?????

Because wet paint looks like dry paint, same thing with hot stove tops.