Waiting for Gödel

It is a fact that no amount of facts can contain or enclose man. We are always more than any sum, because we are conformed to the Infinite. And faith is a name for the modality that conforms us to the Infinite; it is the vertical bridge between -- to keep things strictly scientific -- (¶) and O.

Science cannot do more than draw up the inventory of our prison.

Harsh but fair; for science becomes a prison should we make the rookie error of imagining it can possibly contain us, for again, man is uncontainable. 

With one exception: if, say, the Infinite somehow "incarnated" as finitude -- as human nature -- then it would be as if the Uncontainable became that which contains it. But supposing this happened, the result would be something like, I don't know, "resurrection," which is the ultimate FAIL of containment, so to speak.

Analogously, imagine the Author descending into and submitting to his own narrative. Let's suppose that his own characters even conspire to kill him. It's rather like when we die in a dream. This has happened to me on a few occasions, but I'm here to tell you that I survived the ordeal.

The stories we tell ourselves!

That's a good point, Petey, for we always assemble the facts into a more or less compelling narrative, but the storyteller always transcends the narrative. 

Tell us a story about stories. 

Okay. Once upon a time there was an author with an endless supply of stories. The end. Or rather, there can be no end, because there are always more where that came from. No one will write the last poem or post. 

It reminds me of an essay I read a couple weeks ago on the subject of "malicious storytelling," or what we might call bullshit with malice aforethought:

Most obviously, stories wield power because they mirror back to us our own experiences and shadows. Story is a magic mirror. Whether we realize it or not, what story shows us has the potential to profoundly affect our perception of ourselves and the world.

Back when I was a psychologist, patients would tell me stories about their lives. The stories weren't going well, but it was as if they were trapped in their own little dramas, much like the author who submits to his own creation.

What, after all, is story showing you? When a story is not finely wrought -- when it is sloppy or inaccurate in its portrayal of the form and therefore of life -- it fails as a faithful mirror. To the degree audiences are willing to accept an unfaithful mirror, it creates the potential for imbalance both within individual lives and society as a whole.

A faithful mirror. Now, we accept it as axiomatic that man is a finite mirror of Infinitude. Therefore, any story we tell that fails to take this into account is going to not just be inaccurate but damaging, like a procrustean bed that requires us to lop of various body parts in order to fit into it.

Well, there is no finite bed that can accommodate us, not even a kingsize one.

Academics, journalists, and politicians all have one thing in common: they are bed salesmen. And most of them are lousy storytellers, while some are outright malicious:

when I say a “malicious” story, I do not mean one that is written poorly due to the author’s lack of practice. A poorly written story is not a malicious nor even an evil story; it is a story told by someone who did not have the toolkit or skills to properly execute the vision he had in mind. 

“Malicious” writing in the sense that I use the term, however, is wicked writing. Its intent is to lead the audience to view life in a negative rather than a -- for want of a better term -- balanced manner. 

In this case a “balanced” view of life in fiction acknowledges (1) that there is evil in the world, (2) it will maim, tear, destroy, harm, and even kill to accomplish its ends, (3) evil is not the most powerful force in the universe or human life, (4) good may not win in the heroes’ lifetime but it will win, and (5) those who side with or try to placate evil will be devoured by it.

She's just talking about authors of bad fiction, but I would apply the same principles to stories falling under the heading of HISTORY. I won't belabor the point, because I'm currently reading a book that belabors it for me, called Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World. You could say it deconstructs the deconstructors down to the foundation:

Was America really “stolen” from the Indians? Was Columbus a racist? Were Indians really peace-loving, communistic environmentalists? Did Europeans commit “genocide” in the New World?

It seems that almost everyone -- from CNN to the New York Times to angry students pulling down statues of our founders -- believes that America’s history is a shameful tale of racism, exploitation, and cruelty.

Not Stolen... systematically dismantles this relentlessly negative view of U.S. history, arguing that it is based on shoddy methods, misinformation, and outright lies about the past.  

America was not “stolen” from the Indians but fairly purchased piece by piece in a thriving land market. Nor did European settlers cheat, steal, murder, rape or purposely infect them with smallpox to the extent that most people believe. No genocide occurred -- either literal or cultural -- and the decline of Native populations over time is not due to violence but to assimilation and natural demographic processes. 

Fynn-Paul not only debunks these toxic myths, but provides a balanced portrait of this complex historical process over 500 years. The real history of Native and European relations will surprise you. Not only is this not a tale of shameful sins and crimes against humanity -- it is more inspiring than you ever dared to imagine.

In short, a good story that by no means denies or glosses over the genuine evils that occurred. Conversely, our malicious storytellers expand those evils out of all proportion, while denying the evils committed by Africans, Indians, and other (projected) historical NPCs in order to advance a sick agenda in the present. 

Before we run out of time, let's get back to the cryptic title of our post and try to figure out what it means. Let's consider the scientific story of physical cosmology, of how we got here:

Can this physics give us an understanding about the cosmos which is a priori, that is, the necessary form of understanding and by inference of physical existence?

It's a compelling narrative, to be sure, but

The answer to this question can only be negative as long as Gödel's incompleteness theorem is true..., [that] no sufficiently broad (non-trivial) set of arithmetic propositions can have its proof of consistency within itself (Jaki). 

Thus, any "scientific cosmology" or "cosmological model" falls short of the reality that is what it is, and thensome. If you haven't slipped the surly bonds of scientism, you're just not trying. You need a better story. And a bigger bed.