Seminar: Gemma De les Coves
October 9 @ 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Gemma De les Coves is a physicist and ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
Title: Universality and unreachability: Power and paradoxes from logic to philosophy
Abstract: If “universal” means all-encompassing, universal Turing machines, universal spin models (arXiv:2407.13428), and many other mathematical structures embody this idea (arXiv:2406.16607). Yet when a universal object is of the same kind as the objects it encompasses, self-reference and negation can give rise to a paradox. This tension has profound consequences in logic, underlying results such as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and the undecidability of the halting problem. In philosophy, it challenges the notion of an ultimate collection of all things. In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to understand the scope and limits of universality—and the forms of unreachability that arise—in physics and beyond.