I don't think that's a fair reflection on the history of science. I think we can say we are improving our understanding (of the universe, for instance), but every major turning point in the history of science has opened up for us far more questions than it has answered. It has allowed us to open our minds and our understanding to a whole new variety of possibilities. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell's famous comment regarding philosophy: it is not the goal to find THE answer, but to keep us moving forward.

Sorry to put this here, but I can't find another feedback form.

The question you posted:

How do you reflection on Levin's statement that "we're getting closer to the truth even though we can't always prove it.

doesn't seem to be grammatical.

It SEEMS to mean "what are your reflections on..." or "how do you reflect upon..." but I'm really not sure.

Perhaps you'd like to fix the question to help others.

Also...

there is no "R" in Godel (with an umlaut). The lips are puckered to pronounce the umlaut, but it doesn't make an "R" sound. Saying "Gerdel" is not the correct pronunciation.

I am "truthfully" intrigued by the use of reflection as a verb. In effect, that is a truth that is becoming more and more prevalent in the American reality. Thank you, Krista, for such a program. Always engaging, always stimulating. Reflecting on Levin's statement that "we're getting closer to the truth even though we can't always prove it." is not an exception. The reality is just when, where and how we define "truth". Time and space in conjunction with the "howness", a term frequently used by philosopher, mystics especially Sufis, all affect what falls in or out of truth. What is this truth to which we are getting close? Throughout human history, humans have been getting closer and closer to a truth, no matter what that truth is, be it scientific (mathematical, physical...) on one side or philosophical (metaphysical, spiritual, religious...) on the other. The cumulative knowledge make it so, in general, that truth is clearer, more so as we incrementally advance that knowledge. I believe that this doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere throughout the time of accumulating the human knowledge, did not reach, somehow, the truth at its utmost certainty. I believe that Levin’s statement might have been more accurate had it stated that we are getting closer to proving the truth rather than “… we can’t always prove it”. If the question is about the universe, the truth is more so provable mathematically in the most primordial and physical sense of Mathematics, than ever before. If the question is the creation, particularly beyond the “zero nanomoment” and the creator of that Universe, the truth is still so fluid and not as physically provable without the help of some other finite or infinite dimension, be it faith, metaphysics or some other logical or illogical way, since proving non-physical is not always achievable with the physical alone. The truth is that, admittedly, we are limited in what we can know about the “Truth”, if at least temporarily. Great show, great subjects, Krista. Thank you, Moulay

"with the truth one cannot live" Otto Rank

Scientists assume that there is "A Truth", lying in state, waiting to be discovered. That each step we take to uncover it takes us closer to The Truth one additional iota.

Every description of reality, be it by observation or physical model, is necessarily partial and incomplete. We all resemble the proverbial blind Indians describing an elephant they know by touch.

The attempt to explain the universe and human existence using physics and brain chemistry alone is necessarily a reductionist, "blind Indian" view.

This is where God comes in. It is the indescribable infinity that encompasses the universe, of which we can receive fleeting, partial, imperfect glimpses -- guided by the power of awareness.

And this is the explanation of free will. We all possess free will, whether or not we are aware of it. One cannot make the simplest moral choice without free will.

It is not the narcissistic, "New Age" free-will that purports to wield control over our entire existence; rather, it's the fleeting ability, guided by awareness, to navigate between constraints of reality and the free-will actions of our neighbors.

So if physics or biochemical models cannot describe free will, its source must come from the realm beyond them.

It makes me personally think of a few passages from Rebecca Goldstein's book about Kurt Gödel ("Incompleteness - The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel"). I guess my attitude about that statement depends very much upon "how much" truth we're shooting for, and if it matters to you that there might be an endpoint to the game, that we can't overreach, with a vast array of truths still "out there" forever beyond our reach. If you're going for broke so to speak, assuming that in principle it's possible for us to zoom in on each and every truth, then I do think that assumption must always be a matter of faith not proof, precisely because of Gödel's work. Here are the passages that statement made me think of. Mull over them a bit, and I think you might get the gist of why I feel the way I do:

From "Incompleteness - The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel" (pg. 202):

Gödel himself was far more reserved about drawing conclusions concerning the nature of the human mind from his famous mathematical theorems. What is rigorously proved, he suggested in his conversations with Hao Wang as well as in the Gibbs lecture that he gave in Providence, Rhode Island, 26 February 1951 (which he never published), is not a categorical proposition as regards the mind. Rather what follows is a disjunction, an "either-or" sort of proposition. That is, he was admitting that nonmechanism doesn't follow, clean and simply, from his incompleteness theorem. There are possible outs for the mechanist.

According to Wang, Gödel believed that what had been rigorously proved, presumably on the basis of the incompleteness theorem is: "Either the human mind surpasses all machines (to be more precise it can decide more number theoretical questions than any machine) or else there exist number theoretical questions undecidable for the human mind."

What exactly did Gödel have in mind with this second disjunct. I "think" that what he is considering here is the possibility that we are indeed machines -- that is, that all of our thinking is mechanical, determined by hard-wired rules -- but that we are under the "delusion" that we have access to unformalizable mathematical truth. We could possibly be machines who suffer from delusions of mathematical grandeur. What follows from his theorem, he seems to be suggesting, is that just so long as we are not delusional as regards our grasp of mathematical truths, just so long as we do have the intuitions that we think we have, then we are not machines. If indeed we truly have the intuitions that we do, then it is impossible for us to formalize (or mechanize) all of our mathematical intuitions, which means that we truly are not machines. Of course there is no "proof" that we know all that we think we know, since all that we think we know can't be formalized; that after all, is incompleteness. This is why we can't rigorously prove that we're not machines. The incompleteness theorem, by showing the limits of formalization, both suggest that our minds transcend machines and makes it impossible to "prove" that our minds transcend machines. Again, an almost-paradox.

An extremely interesting conversation. I made me want to run right out and buy her books. The conversation regarding her thinking on religion and the last statement about there being no space until it happened (or words to that effect) is the most interesting to me. Would like to read more about her thoughts.
I have a room of books on Religion and I would like to get outside of it.

I really enjoyed listening to the mathematics, + truth, purpose podcast. I think that the truth can be proved and defended. We may differ on the basis for the proof or defense; I would rely on the scriptures more than a mathematical or scientific test as the method for the demonstration. First, I believe the words of Jesus: “I am the way the truth and the life. . .” John 14.6. This is not to minimize the beauty or progress that has been achieved through developing the concepts of particle theory, quantum mechanics, unraveling DNA and mapping the human genome. When I consider the question about truth I also think of the words of Pilate to Jesus: “What is truth?”

One of my sincere questions on how it happened is the stopping and turning back of time on earth, as recorded in the scriptures: Joshua 10.12-13 and 2 Kings 20.11. As a matter of faith I believe these events occurred as they were written. Perhaps the space-time understanding that Einstein developed brings some degree of explanation to this. My mother-in-law recently challenged me on God’s first creation. I was thinking well of course it was the heaven and the earth. Her proposition to me was that the first creation was time, and the continuation of that thought is that God, being outside of and not limited by the time created, will at some point in the future cause the cessation of time. Even the concept of future is only from my perspective, not God’s.

As concerning the concept of free will, and I would by-and-large agree with Levin’s conceptualization, especially the difference between the human constructs and the forces described through mathematical formulae. It may be a bit of a quip, that freedom is not free, but I think it speaks to the concept that we have limitations, responsibilities and purpose that define our understanding of freedom. Perhaps when we escape the boundaries of one reality – human or scientific – we then enter a new freedom that later we will challenge, and so on.

One poem that came to my mind during the podcast was Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day”. If you have a moment, take some time to read this poem and reflect. It takes me from an abstraction of things we may not know to a specific grasshopper that we can see, handle and enjoy. This is kind of a passage from ethereal truths we can only dimly see, to the physical ones we can.

Mathematics, Purpose, + Truth was a segment that featured Janna Levin, a theoretical physicist who wrote a novel named A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. She began her career in science with little interest, instead she thought that philosophy was asking all of the really good questions. Obviously she still pursued her career as a physicist but she has a special interest in areas where the scientific meets the philosophical. Specifically, she is interested in areas where truth cannot be defined or where truth is entirely humanly constructed.

One of the underlying concepts of her book was the idea that not all mathematical truths can be proven to be true but rather must just be accepted. Along these lines she talks extensively about what is real, what is not, and how we can tell the difference. Another idea that she brought up was that our convincing intuitions are specific to the type of beings that we are. An example that she brings up is that our visual perception quality peaks at the frequency for the color yellow, which is the color of the sun. She states that we are formed in a way that helps us decode the world around us. One of the other interesting points that she brings up is the idea of voting for government officials. This is an entirely humanly created process that she thinks is peculiar that we can all come together and agree to respect and follow the leadership of one man. As a student who is studying sociology at the same time, this podcast stresses the value in having the ability to distill the elements and the means of sociology and examine them individually for their truths. Janna Levin is not confined by social norms but chooses to see past them, not out of rebellion but as an exploration of what might be real that lies outside what we think is real.

Prof Levin,
I really enjoyed your unedited interview with Krista Tippet, especially the part that talks about a "Finite World". I'm and aircraft technician with Continental Airlines and a Chief in the Navy Reserves who enjoys learning about Space. What prompted me to email you was in your interview you said that the "World is Finite". After that I recalled a story in the news that a father & son team placed an I Phone with a video camera into a styrofoam capsule and launched it into Space (80 miles short) by using a weather ballon as it's power. The unit was launched from Newburgh N.Y. and it was retrieved 30 miles away from it's launch point. I discussed this with my coworker's but the didn't understand how this could land so close to is starting point. Could this be a "micro view" of something that travels in a straight line and arrives back or close to where it started? I have to purchase you books now... There's so much interesting things in books. Thanks again. Reggie Spence

Krista, i sent this email to Janna Levin. Take Care. Reggie.

I think Levin is speaking to the process of science, whereby scientific theories must be falsifiable. This self-correcting process of science (that religion, for example, lacks) results in a catalog of tested theories that provide the most reliable way of seeing nature as it actually is, which for Levin is where the truth lies regardless of our cherished beliefs. Nonetheless, because our senses evolved in a relatively confined natural environment, powered by a three-tiered evolutionarily jury-rigged brain notoriously prone to error, we have to be careful in claiming to have proofs of truth.

An interview with an author who is "besotted with mathematics"

Levin's "I think that the answers that we're going to get, the discoveries that we're going to make are going to be in mathematics" is the dimness before the dark. See Adam Curtis' BBC documentary The Trap for the lights out on quantification.

These ideas always give me the "wow" sensation. Though I am a redneck, I do have a degree in Physics. OK, I flunked out of it at grad school., but the blogger who said she likes the Iris DeMent song...I get it as well.

I just discovered On Being and Krista Tippet and am really excited about scanning the archives. Though I'm really looking forward to it, I haven't listened to this show or read Levin's book yet. Therefore I should probably obey Wittgenstein's injunction but what the heck, this is the age of impatience. Re. the line in the blurb: "Their work laid the foundations for computer intelligence while challenging fundamental notions about how we can know what is true." it's always been my contention (despite having spent a career as a physicist) that nobody has yet been able to show that Godel's incompleteness results didn't forever damm attempts to argue that scientists are converging on any sort of definable truth. As a human activity it seems fine to me that scientists proceed with a belief in convergence but I think Godel's result present a profound challenge to epistemology and as a result lower the high horse of arguments about scientific omniscience a bit. But maybe Levin and Tippet clear this all up. Hope so !