Reports

Do Negative Results from Formal Systems Limit Scientific Knowledge?

Traub, Joseph F.

This article lies at the intersection of computational physics and theoretical computer science. Over the last 60 years there has been a stream of negative results announcing undecidability, non-computability, and intractability. Are these impossibility results relevant to physics? I will discuss two of the negative results and provide arguments regarding their relevance.

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Academic Units
Computer Science
Publisher
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University
Series
Columbia University Computer Science Technical Reports, CUCS-012-97
Published Here
April 25, 2011