Press release (in German) by the University of Wuppertal

The Kurt Gödel Circle of Friends Berlin with the support of the University of Wuppertal
presents the

Kurt Gödel Award 2021

for the promotion and dissemination of Gödel’s work
in the natural sciences and humanities:

Gödel and the non-existence of time

For the second contest, we focussed on Kurt Gödel’s little-noticed argument for the nonexistence of time from his contribution in the book celebrating Einstein’s 70th birthday* This prize was again awarded in an essay contest for the best answers to the following question:

What does it mean for our world view if, according to Gödel, we also assume the non-existence of time?

Contributions were again welcome which illuminate the subject matter from a philosophical, mathematical-logical or scientific perspective, if they relate to Kurt Gödel’s work..**

1st prize: 10,000 €
as well as five further prizes for particularly good contributions
from the shortlist, each with 1,000 €.

The deadline for submissions was 30.9.2021. All submitted entries were submitted to the jury of the Kurt Gödel Prize anonymously. It has made a pre-selection of the contributions received, excluding contributions which it considers less interesting (shortlist) by a 2/3 majority.

This pre-selection is now published here until the prize-giving without mentioning the authors‘ names as PDF (ranked only by the length of the essays):

• If the actual Universe is a Gödel Universe?
• Self or the world
• Die philosophische Bedeutung des Gödel-Universums
• Without time, the world becomes Leibnizian
• Das Neudenken der Kausalität auf Basis der Abschaffung des herkömmlichen Zeitbegriffs
• Die Zeit heilt keine Wunden
• Was bedeutet es für unser Weltbild, wenn wir mit Gödel die Nichtexistenz der Zeit annehmen?
• Was bedeutet es für unser Weltbild, wenn wir mit Kurt Gödel die Nichtexistenz der Zeit annehmen?
• Über philosophische Konsequenzen der Unmöglichkeit einer objektiven Bestimmung von Veränderung – im Anschluss an Kurt Gödel
• How much Time does a logical Interference take?

The jury is currently deliberating on the winners. The winners will be notified no later than 31.12.2021.
All essays are copyrighted, so may only be used with the consent of the respective authors. With the prize-giving, only the essays of the prizewinners will be published here, then by name. All others can only be viewed here until this prize-giving. The conditions of participation can be found here.
The decisions of the jury of the Kurt Gödel Prize are final. Legal redress is excluded.

Kurt Gödel Freundeskreis, c/o Hans Schwarzlow, Arenholzsteig 3, 12103 Berlin, www.kurtgoedel.de

For requests by the press about the award, please contact
Hans Schwarzlow: schwarzlow[ät]t-online.de or Oliver Passon: passon[ät]uni-wuppertal.de

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** here is a comprehensible and detailed explanation of Prof. Palle Yourgrau’s reasoning.
** So it is not about a confirmation or refutation of Kurt Gödel’s reasoning, instead for the contest this is assumed to be correct.
Aditionally, on 14 June 2021 the following report was published in Nature Astronomy:
Possible observational evidence for cosmic filament spin, see full article here: https://rdcu.be/cxan3
This link is interesting because it could support Kurt Gödel’s argument for the non-existence of time. Hao Wang wrote in Reflections on Kurt Gödel MIT Press, (1987), p. 183, quote:
„The quality of these observations [a very low rate of rotation] improved continually up until Gödel’s death, and he would always ask „is the universe rotating yet?“ and be told „no, it isn’t“ „ see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_metric