Event Details

Please join the Philosophy Department for the second of our fall speaker series featuring Professor Patricia Blanchette, University of Notre Dame, who will give a talk titled "Logic and Geometry: Why Logical Claims Aren't Always What They Seem to Be." 

Euclid’s famous “parallels postulate” is not provable from the other axioms of Euclidean geometry. And that’s extremely important, since modern physics would be radically different otherwise. But how did we demonstrate that this postulate isn’t provable? More generally: how can you ever demonstrate that one thing is not provable from others? Modern logic has an answer: it has a method for demonstrating non-provability, which is pretty amazing. This lecture explains the development of this method, and raises the following question: Is the method actually any good?  For the answer, you have to come to the lecture.    

This hour long lecture will be at 4:40 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 18 in the Harmon Room with discussion following. Light refreshments will be served.