David Peat

On Incompleteness 51tional borders; neither do acid rain, ocean currents, carbon dioxide, apolluting wind, global warming, or the health of the ozone layer.Gödel’s theorem may have been a blow to mathematics, but it containsa profound lesson for us all. We had taken too much pride in thepower of human reason to erect vast, impermeable towers of reason,logical systems of flawless perfection, and all-embracing canopies ofknowledge. Gödel pointed out the potential flaws in this dream andshowed that all-embracing schemes may contain unsuspected inconsistencies—nomatter how hard we try to be comprehensive there willalways be some missing knowledge. Gödel’s metaphor applies to everythingwe do; therefore if we are to relate to the new millennium in acreative fashion we must learn new ways of thinking, ways that aremore flexible and open than ever before. Rather than dealing with organizationsthat are rule-bound and hierarchical, we should be lookingto systems that self-organize, that are organic and open in nature,and that generate their own, internal, context-dependent logics andconnections.