The inteligilidad of the universe is, for many, incomprehensible. Why the universe is intelligible? Why the universe is governed by laws which we represent with mathematics? "They depend on the laws of the universe in our history, our culture, sex of the scientist who found them? Is it possible to conceive of an alternative description to the physical laws fully independent but as predictive as we use today? All these questions are implicit in the famous quote from Einstein in which he suggests that the most incomprehensible is that the universe is comprehensible. There is also a test of Wigner on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the universe. Intelligibility is certainly a mystery.
There are many interesting points that I would love to discuss. For example, it is necessary to define "intelligibility". It can also provide adjectives and objectives. One could analyze the concept of "depth" at different levels of understanding of the same phenomenon. Reserve this point for another entry. I would like here talk about a point of view (not mine, nor defend) bit darker and said: intelligibility is only a computational concept.
From the world of algorithmic computability is Gregory Chaitin of IBM who suggests that intelligibility is reduced to achieve a minimum algorithm describing a natural phenomenon. A good theory should provide the minimum prescription for computing a plethora of physical phenomena. A more concise the theory, the greater our intelligibility. This view welcomes the laws of Newton. They are concise, allow us to build bridges, calculating trajectories, create buildings.
Moreover, the intelligibility understood as obtaining an algorithm meets minimum number of paradoxes. On the one hand, we know that the minimum size of a predicate is incalculable. This is a concept associated with the Kolmogorov complexity, which is undecidable due to Gödel's theorem. We will never know if an algorithm is minimal. Is undecidable. Moreover, it is obvious that extensive algorithms that describe a physical phenomenon can have a great capacity for generalization. For example, the laws of general relativity are much more extensive and predictive than those of Newton. General relativity gives us a complex algorithm, not minimum, but vastly more profound than Newtonian gravity because the invariance under diffeomorphisms has penetrated theory and has provided a highly refined mathematical structure. Forgetting
already Chaitin, sometimes I think that intelligibility may be a foreign concept to our logic. If so, nothing can be said. Otherwise, if something makes sense, I bet that intelligibility is related to depth. Reserve this discussion for another entry.
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