reality , which is crucial. There’s no reality without measurement, and to measure, one has to look. So that we can’t speak of the cat as having any reality until we open the box and look.’
‘Kick the damn box; that’ll tell you.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Why do I feel my lecture is falling upon deaf ears?’
Jury smiled. ‘Well, drunk ears, anyway.’
The waiter was there now, launching into his list of specials, a litany from which Jury could make out only two or three words that sounded familiar. ‘Salmon’ was one. He ordered it, despite its sauce, its seasonings and other complications. ‘Fillet’ was another.
Harry ordered that. They both ordered the house salad.
They returned (all of them, if Jury correctly assessed Mungo’s temperament) to the undead cat in the box. Jury said, ‘You know, you said something back in the pub about an objects’ changing depending upon how we observed it. This Niels Bohr theory: it sounds like that. That we can’t know if a thing exists until we see it. That’s a lot like the tree in the forest falling.’
‘Something like it, yes. We can’t comment on the cat’s separate reality until we open the box. No, it’s more that the cat has no separate reality until we see it; that is, can measure it.’
Harry paused and drank some more whiskey. ‘Going back to Gödel: he was at Princeton with Einstein, who greatly admired him. Einstein couldn’t have admired that many in his field. And he distrusted quantum theory. Anyway, Gödel proved the existence of unprovable arithmetical truths. Propositions both true and unprovable. When the physics community finally worked out what he was saying–and he said it in one well-turned sentence, as I recall-they couldn’t believe it. When he said it, they didn’t really hear it.
Gödel was a young mathematician. But when they realized, well, as I said, they couldn’t believe it. How could something be both true and unprovable? Truth posits ‘provability,’ doesn’t it?’
Jury just looked at him, feeling thick as two planks.
‘Of course it does. It’s one of the most revolutionary theories in mathematics. The theory of incompleteness is what he called it. The incompleteness proof. A proof that, within a formal system, proves something unprovable.’
Jury looked up from his salad. ‘That’s paradoxical, isn’t it?’
‘You’re absolutely right. Remember what’s called the liar’s paradox?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Take the sentence ‘I am a liar.’ That sentence is true only if it’s false. If you say you’re lying, then you’re not, from which it follows that you are, and so on and so on. Of course Gödel is talking about arithmetical proofs. But that an arithmetical proof which should automatically be true–no. Gödel was talking about proving the unprovable. Proving that there were arithmetical truths that were unprovable.’
Jury wondered how this was possible.
For a few moments they ate in silence.
‘Hugh seems to think she–Glynnis–could be anywhere. It’s like predicting the position of an electron. Until you measure it, it’s nowhere. It doesn’t have a definite position.’
‘In the world of Schrödinger’s cat, maybe. But Hugh’s wife isn’t a particle.’
‘But that’s the implication, isn’t it?’
Jury thought about this. ‘This disappearance doesn’t seem real, does it?’
‘Perhaps not, but it happened,’ Harry said drily.
Jury said nothing.
‘Hugh wondered a lot about that, I remember. I remember he shook his head and said, ‘It never happened.’’
‘What did he mean?’
‘I don’t really know.’
‘Perhaps with Hugh it was simply denial.’
‘Maybe.’ Harry seemed to be studying something not on his plate but in his mind. ‘Upstairs there were four bedrooms, empty like the rest of the house. There were no outbuildings, no pasture or paddock, just the woods and the grass going down to them. Of course, we paid no attention to our Mr. Jessup’s
‘Kick the damn box; that’ll tell you.’
Harry shrugged. ‘Why do I feel my lecture is falling upon deaf ears?’
Jury smiled. ‘Well, drunk ears, anyway.’
The waiter was there now, launching into his list of specials, a litany from which Jury could make out only two or three words that sounded familiar. ‘Salmon’ was one. He ordered it, despite its sauce, its seasonings and other complications. ‘Fillet’ was another.
Harry ordered that. They both ordered the house salad.
They returned (all of them, if Jury correctly assessed Mungo’s temperament) to the undead cat in the box. Jury said, ‘You know, you said something back in the pub about an objects’ changing depending upon how we observed it. This Niels Bohr theory: it sounds like that. That we can’t know if a thing exists until we see it. That’s a lot like the tree in the forest falling.’
‘Something like it, yes. We can’t comment on the cat’s separate reality until we open the box. No, it’s more that the cat has no separate reality until we see it; that is, can measure it.’
Harry paused and drank some more whiskey. ‘Going back to Gödel: he was at Princeton with Einstein, who greatly admired him. Einstein couldn’t have admired that many in his field. And he distrusted quantum theory. Anyway, Gödel proved the existence of unprovable arithmetical truths. Propositions both true and unprovable. When the physics community finally worked out what he was saying–and he said it in one well-turned sentence, as I recall-they couldn’t believe it. When he said it, they didn’t really hear it.
Gödel was a young mathematician. But when they realized, well, as I said, they couldn’t believe it. How could something be both true and unprovable? Truth posits ‘provability,’ doesn’t it?’
Jury just looked at him, feeling thick as two planks.
‘Of course it does. It’s one of the most revolutionary theories in mathematics. The theory of incompleteness is what he called it. The incompleteness proof. A proof that, within a formal system, proves something unprovable.’
Jury looked up from his salad. ‘That’s paradoxical, isn’t it?’
‘You’re absolutely right. Remember what’s called the liar’s paradox?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Take the sentence ‘I am a liar.’ That sentence is true only if it’s false. If you say you’re lying, then you’re not, from which it follows that you are, and so on and so on. Of course Gödel is talking about arithmetical proofs. But that an arithmetical proof which should automatically be true–no. Gödel was talking about proving the unprovable. Proving that there were arithmetical truths that were unprovable.’
Jury wondered how this was possible.
For a few moments they ate in silence.
‘Hugh seems to think she–Glynnis–could be anywhere. It’s like predicting the position of an electron. Until you measure it, it’s nowhere. It doesn’t have a definite position.’
‘In the world of Schrödinger’s cat, maybe. But Hugh’s wife isn’t a particle.’
‘But that’s the implication, isn’t it?’
Jury thought about this. ‘This disappearance doesn’t seem real, does it?’
‘Perhaps not, but it happened,’ Harry said drily.
Jury said nothing.
‘Hugh wondered a lot about that, I remember. I remember he shook his head and said, ‘It never happened.’’
‘What did he mean?’
‘I don’t really know.’
‘Perhaps with Hugh it was simply denial.’
‘Maybe.’ Harry seemed to be studying something not on his plate but in his mind. ‘Upstairs there were four bedrooms, empty like the rest of the house. There were no outbuildings, no pasture or paddock, just the woods and the grass going down to them. Of course, we paid no attention to our Mr. Jessup’s
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