The End is Uncertain...

A brief break from school allowed for a brief connection of ideas.  Doing some light reading on the toilet (Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle"- a key component of quantum physics) I came across a quote that, like dominos, fell in a cascading succession of connections with other things that I have read over the past several years.  So here, for your enjoyment, are a collection of quotes- from mathematics/science/philosophy, aesthetics, and a linguistic contribution to cognitive development- that have me pondering a strange but beautiful theme emerging.  (And, as a nod to my current schooling, citations and a bibliography in APA format.)

"Waves and particles, Bohr said in effect, are ways we speak about events in the atomic realm.  Neither way is entirely accurate, but the two ways have overlapping but restricted spheres of application... 'There is no quantum world.  There is only an abstract physical description.  It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is.  Physics concerns what we can say about nature.'" (Crease, 2008)

"There would be no problems of aesthetics,... if no one ever talked about works of art...But as soon as we utter a statement about the work, various sorts of question can arise...When, however, we ask questions, not about works of art, but about what the critic says about works of art...Questions like these are questions of aesthetics... aesthetics consists of those principles that are required for clarifying and confirming critical statements." (Beardsley, 1988)

"[Gödel's] idea was to use mathematical reasoning in exploring mathematical reasoning itself...Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem...: All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions... Mathematical statements- let us concentrate on number-theoretical ones- are about properties of whole numbers.  Whole numbers are not statements, nor are their properties.  A statement of number theory is not about a statement of number theory; it just is a statement of number theory." (Hofstadter, 1999)

"What is pertinent to the development of [Comprehensive Language Awareness] is that one can come to realize (1) that definitions are not fixed and unequivocal, (2) that they are constructed by humans and change over time, and (3) that the meaning of a word only exists against the backdrop of other words and their meanings.  Given this general uncertainty about individual word meaning, it is striking that the whole matrix of words in any given language does seem to provide enough common ground as to the approximate meaning of each word to allow for communication,..." (Cook-Greuter, 1995)

The meaning of these statements is uncertain(ty).

References:
Beardsley, Monroe C. (1988). Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Second Edition).      Indianapolis. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Cook-Greuter, Susanne R. (1995). Comprehensive Language Awareness: A Definition of the Phenomenon and a Review of Its Treatment in the Postformal Adult Development Literature (submitted to Harvard Graduate School of Education). Retrieved from http://www.cook-greuter.com.

Crease, Robert P. (2008). The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to  Heisenberg. New York.  W.W. Norton & Co.

Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Twentieth anniversary edition). New York. Basic Books.