Chapter 9

Overview

An attempt is made to talk about the strange ideas of Zen Buddhism. The Zen monk Mumon, who gave well known commentaries on many kõans, is a central figure. In a way, Zen ideas bear a metaphorical resemblance to some contemporary ideas in the philosophy of mathematics. After this "Zennery", Gödel’s fundamental idea of Gödel-numbering is introduced, and a first pass through Gödel’s Theorem is made.

While you read

1. How is Verbum (Fig. 149) like a Strange Loop?
2. The Gödel-numbering of TNT (p. 268) is very similar to another "encoding". Which one is it?

Questions

1. On p. 266 DRH says that MUMON can be taken in at least two different ways. Can you think of more?
2. Looking back, can you find another implicit meaning of the Contracrostipunctus? (p. 92)
3. Find a Gödel-Numbering for the pq-System and "arithmetize" the rules. Is there a way to characterize pq-numbers in a simple way?
4. Is Zen complete? Is it consistent?