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Leibniz, complexity and incompleteness

Gregory J. Chaitin

pp. 127-133

Leibniz in 1686 in his Discours de mtaphysique points out that if an arbitrarily complex theory is permitted then the notion of theory" becomes vacuous because there is always a theory. This idea is developed in the modern theory of algorithmic information, which deals with the size of computer programs and provides a new view of Gdel's work on incompleteness and Turing's work on uncomputability.This will be a first-person account of some doubts and speculations about the nature of mathematics that I have entertained for the past three decades.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3529-5_7

Full citation:

Chaitin, G. J. (2010)., Leibniz, complexity and incompleteness, in , Causality, meaningful complexity and embodied cognition, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 127-133.

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