Postmodern Science and The Matrix Reloaded

QUESTION: Postmodern Science – The Matrix: Reloaded

ANSWER:

“What do Christianity, Zen, and formal mathematical logic have in common? If you look closely, The Matrix: Reloaded will tell you....Structurally, the mythology of The Matrix is patterned directly after a...mathematical logic known as the Incompleteness Theorem, first discovered by the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel in the early 1930s....This means, in essence, that there are truths that exist within a system that are not provable using the rules of that system...

Postmodern Science – The Incompleteness Theorem
At heart an elaborate computer program, the Matrix is itself nothing more than another formal system....As a formal system, it too is limited by Gödel’s finding. The existence of the One is thus explained....As the Architect explains to Neo at the end of Reloaded:

Your life is the sum of the remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly which is systemic, creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.

Neo is a destabilizing anomaly inherent to every conceivable Matrix: he is the Gödel Sentence itself....[and his] incorporation is accomplished by...“return[ing] to the source.” This renews the Matrix and saves it from the instability introduced by his arrival. This is not a permanent fix, however, for the new version of the Matrix is susceptible to its own version of the Gödel Sentence, which will ultimately lead to the birth of yet another One and a continuing cycle of death-and-rebirth of the system, presumably ad infinitum. According to the Architect, the trilogy takes place during the fifth repetition of that cycle.”1

Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book,Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews(Rev. 2^nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

¹ The Matrix: Reloaded, Jesus, Buddha, and Gödel: Unraveling the Matrix Mythos, by Eric Furze, http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=169_0_2_0.