OMNISCIENCE

Life, the Universe, and Everything

By Andy Ross
September 2006
PDF: 24 slides, 171 KB
 

Omniscience is the science of everything. Starting from logic, the scope of omniscience extends to embrace life and the universe. But the aim is not to reach a final formula, in the style of theoretical physics, that one could print on a teeshirt. For omniscience that aim is clearly utopian, or rather trivial. As Douglas Adams said in his hitch-hiker's guide, the answer is 42. Now what exactly was the question again? One formulation is due to William Arntz et al., and goes approximately like this: What the Bleep?!