Sunday, March 31, 2019
"Russell's Paradox": does this create quantum theory? does it contradict my existence?
Jade Tan-Holmes explains “Russell’s Paradox: A Ripple in the Foundations of Mathematics” on the Up and Atom channel.
She starts out by describing the Barber’s Paradox. (See my GLBT blog today with an embed of a short film by Eduardo Sanchez-Ubanell doing drag without really doing drag – you’ll see that paradox.)
There is the idea that biology is based on chemistry, which is in turn based on physics (I remember a middle school substitute teaching assignment on this idea back in 2005), and physics is in turn based on mathematics. She doesn’t mention it, but elementary particles seem to follow the mathematics of quaternions.
The Foundations of Mathematics are traced through Plato and Aristotle, up toe Frege, whose set theory was undermined by a letter from Bertrand Russell stating the paradox, enumerated here in Wikipedia. Frege actually had a nervous breakdown over the contradiction.
But does this contradiction somehow generate quantum entanglement?
A co-worker friend back in 1971 when I worked for the Navy Department gave me a used copy of a biography of Bertrand Russell. We used to tease each other with conjectures.
As taught in graduate school, mathematics used to be divided into Analysis and Algebra, with topology overlying analysis, and then there is such a thing as algebraic topology.