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# On the intelligibility of the universe and the notions of simplicity, complexity and irreducibility

## I Plato’s Timaeus—The Universe is Intelligible. Origins of the Notion of Simplicity: Simplicity as Symmetry \[Brisson, Meyerstein 1991\]

“\[T\]his is the central idea developed in the Timaeus: the order established by the demiurge in the universe becomes manifest as the symmetry found at its most fundamental level, a symmetry which makes possible a mathematical description of such a universe.”

—Brisson, Meyerstein, Inventing the Universe, 1995 (1991 in French). This book discusses the cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus, modern cosmology and AIT; one of their key insights is to identify symmetry with simplicity.

According to Plato, the world is rationally understandable because it has structure. And the universe has structure, because it is a work of art created by a God who is a mathematician. Or, more abstractly, the structure of the world consists of God’s thoughts, which are mathematical. The fabric of reality is built out of eternal mathematical truth. \[Brisson, Meyerstein, Inventer l’Univers, 1991\]

Timaeus postulates that simple, symmetrical geometrical forms are the building blocks for the universe: the circle and the regular solids (cube, tetrahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron).

What was the evidence that convinced the ancient Greeks that the world is comprehensible? Partly it was the beauty of mathematics, particularly geometry and number theory, and partly the Pythagorean work on the physics of stringed instruments and musical tones, and in astronomy, the regularities in the motions of the planets and the starry heavens and eclipses. Strangely enough, mineral crystals, whose symmetries magnify enormously quantum-mechanical symmetries that are found at the atomic and molecular level, are never mentioned.

What is our current cosmology?

Since the chaos of everyday existence provides little evidence of simplicity, biology is based on chemistry is based on physics is based on high-energy or particle physics. The attempt to find underlying simplicity and pattern leads reductionist modern science to break things into smaller and smaller components in an effort to find the underlying simple building blocks.

And the modern version of the cosmology of Timaeus is the application of symmetries or group theory to understand sub-atomic particles (formerly called elementary particles), for example, Gell-Mann’s eightfold way, which predicted new particles. This work classifying the “particle zoo” also resembles Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements that organizes their chemical properties so well.444For more on this, see the essay by Freeman Dyson on “Mathematics in the Physical Sciences” in COSRIMS, The Mathematical Sciences, 1969. This is an article of his that was originally published in Scientific American.

And modern physicists have also come up with a possible answer to the Einstein quotation at the beginning of this paper. Why do they think that the universe is comprehensible? They invoke the so-called “anthropic principle” \[Barrow, Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 1986\], and declare that we would not be here to ask this question unless the universe had enough order for complicated creatures like us to evolve!

Now let’s proceed to the next major step in the evolution of ideas on simplicity and complexity, which is a stronger version of the Platonic creed due to Leibniz.

## II What Does it Mean for the Universe to be Intelligible? Leibniz’s Discussion of Simplicity, Complexity and Lawlessness \[Weyl 1932\]

“As for the simplicity of the ways of God, this holds properly with respect to his means, as opposed to the variety, richness, and abundance, which holds with respect to his ends or effects.”

“But, when a rule is extremely complex, what is in conformity with it passes for irregular. Thus, one can say, in whatever manner God might have created the world, it would always have been regular and in accordance with a certain general order. But God has chosen the most perfect world, that is, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena, as might be a line in geometry whose construction is easy and whose properties and effects are extremely remarkable and widespread.”

—Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686, Sections 5–6, from Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Ariew and Garber, 1989, pp. 38–39.

“The assertion that nature is governed by strict laws is devoid of all content if we do not add the statement that it is governed by mathematically simple laws… That the notion of law becomes empty when an arbitrary complication is permitted was already pointed out by Leibniz in his Metaphysical Treatise \[Discourse on Metaphysics\]. Thus simplicity becomes a working principle in the natural sciences… The astonishing thing is not that there exist natural laws, but that the further the analysis proceeds, the finer the details, the finer the elements to which the phenomena are reduced, the simpler—and not the more complicated, as one would originally expect—the fundamental relations become and the more exactly do they describe the actual occurrences. But this circumstance is apt to weaken the metaphysical power of determinism, since it makes the meaning of natural law depend on the fluctuating distinction between mathematically simple and complicated functions or classes of functions.”

—Hermann Weyl, The Open World, Three Lectures on the Metaphysical Implications of Science, 1932, pp. 40–42. See a similar discussion on pp. 190–191 of Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 1949, Section 23A, “Causality and Law”.555This is a remarkable anticipation of my definition of “algorithmic randomness”, as a set of observations that only has what Weyl considers to be unacceptable theories, ones that are as complicated as the observations themselves, without any “compression”.

“Weyl said, not long ago, that ‘the problem of simplicity is of central importance for the epistemology of the natural sciences’. Yet it seems that interest in the problem has lately declined; perhaps because, especially after Weyl’s penetrating analysis, there seemed to be so little chance of solving it.”

—Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 1949, p. 155, quoted in Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959, Chapter VII, “Simplicity”, p. 136.

In his novel Candide, Voltaire ridiculed Leibniz, caricaturing Leibniz’s subtle views with the memorable phrase “this is the best of all possible worlds”. Voltaire also ridiculed the efforts of Maupertius to develop a physics in line with Leibniz’s views, one based on a principle of least effort.

Nevertheless versions of least effort play a fundamental role in modern science, starting with Fermat’s deduction of the laws for reflection and refraction of light from a principle of least time. This continues with the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics, stating that the actual motion minimizes the integral of the difference between the potential and the kinetic energy. And least effort is even important at the current frontiers, such as in Feynman’s path integral formulation of quantum mechanics (electron waves) and quantum electrodynamics (photons, electromagnetic field quanta).666See the short discussion of minimum principles in Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 1965, Chapter 2, “The Relation of Mathematics to Physics”. For more information, see The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1963, Vol. 1, Chapter 26, “Optics: The Principle of Least Time”, Vol. 2, Chapter 19, “The Principle of Least Action”.

However, all this modern physics refers to versions of least effort, not to ideas, not to information, and not to complexity—which are more closely connected with Plato’s original emphasis on symmetry and intellectual simplicity = intelligibility. An analogous situation occurs in theoretical computer science, where work on computational complexity is usually focussed on time, not on the complexity of ideas or information. Work on time complexity is of great practical value, but I believe that the complexity of ideas is of greater conceptual significance. Yet another example of the effort/information divide is the fact that I am interested in the irreducibility of ideas (see Sections V and VI), while Stephen Wolfram (who is discussed later in this section) instead emphasizes time irreducibility, physical systems for which there are no predictive short-cuts and the fastest way to see what they do is just to run them.

Leibniz’s doctrine concerns more than “least effort”, it also implies that the ideas that produce or govern this world are as beautiful and as simple as possible. In more modern terms, God employed the smallest possible amount of intellectual material to build the world, and the laws of physics are as simple and as beautiful as they can be and allow us, intelligent beings, to evolve.777This is a kind of “anthropic principle”, the attempt to deduce things about the universe from the fact that we are here and able to look at it. The belief in this Leibnizean doctrine lies behind the continuing reductionist efforts of high-energy physics (particle physics) to find the ultimate components of reality. The continuing vitality of this Leibnizean doctrine also lies behind astrophysicist John Barrow’s emphasis in his “Theories of Everything” essay on finding the minimal TOE that explains the universe, a TOE that is as simple as possible, with no redundant elements (see Section VII below).

Important point: To say that the fundamental laws of physics must be simple does not at all imply that it is easy or fast to deduce from them how the world works, that it is quick to make predictions from the basic laws. The apparent complexity of the world we live in—a phrase that is constantly repeated in Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, 2002—then comes from the long deductive path from the basic laws to the level of our experience.888It could also come from the complexity of the initial conditions, or from coin-tossing, i.e., randomness. So again, I claim that minimum information is more important than minimum time, which is why in Section IV I do not care how long a minimum-size program takes to produce its output, nor how much time it takes to calculate experimental data using a scientific theory.

More on Wolfram: In A New Kind of Science, Wolfram reports on his systematic computer search for simple rules with very complicated consequences, very much in the spirit of Leibniz’s remarks above. First Wolfram amends the Pythagorean insight that Number rules the universe to assert the primacy of Algorithm, not Number. And those are discrete algorithms, it’s a digital philosophy!999That’s a term invented by Edward Fredkin, who has worked on related ideas. Then Wolfram sets out to survey all possible worlds, at least all the simple ones.101010That’s why his book is so thick! Along the way he finds a lot of interesting stuff. For example, Wolfram’s cellular automata rule 110 is a universal computer, an amazingly simple one, that can carry out any computation. A New Kind of Science is an attempt to discover the laws of the universe by pure thought, to search systematically for God’s building blocks!

The limits of reductionism: In what sense can biology and psychology be reduced to mathematics and physics?! This is indeed the acid test of a reductionist viewpoint! Historical contingency is often invoked here: life as “frozen accidents” (mutations), not something fundamental \[Wolfram, Gould\]. Work on artificial life (Alife) plus advances in robotics are particularly aggressive reductionist attempts. The normal way to “explain” life is evolution by natural selection, ignoring Darwin’s own sexual selection and symbiotic/cooperative views of the origin of biological progress—new species—notably espoused by Lynn Margulis (“symbiogenesis”). Other problems with Darwinian gradualism: following the DNA as software paradigm, small changes in DNA software can produce big changes in organisms, and a good way to build this software is by trading useful subroutines (this is called horizontal or lateral DNA transfer).111111This is how bacteria acquire immunity to antibiotics. In fact, there is a lack of fossil evidence for many intermediate forms,121212Already noted by Darwin. which is evidence for rapid production of new species (so-called “punctuated equilibrium”).

## III What do Working Scientists Think about Simplicity and Complexity?

“Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought…  Those ideas that hold good throughout the widest domains of research and that supplement the greatest amount of experience, are the most scientific.

—Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics, 1893, Chapter IV, Section IV, “The Economy of Science”, reprinted in Newman, The World of Mathematics, 1956.

“Furthermore, the attitude that theoretical physics does not explain phenomena, but only classifies and correlates, is today accepted by most theoretical physicists. This means that the criterion of success for such a theory is simply whether it can, by a simple and elegant classifying and correlating scheme, cover very many phenomena, which without this scheme would seem complicated and heterogeneous, and whether the scheme even covers phenomena which were not considered or even not known at the time when the scheme was evolved. (These two latter statements express, of course, the unifying and the predicting power of a theory.)”

—John von Neumann, “The Mathematician”, 1947, reprinted in Newman, The World of Mathematics, 1956, and in Bródy, Vámos, The Neumann Compendium, 1995.

These fundamental concepts and postulates, which cannot be further reduced logically, form the essential part of a theory, which reason cannot touch. It is the grand object of all theory to make these irreducible elements as simple and as few in number as possible… \[As\] the distance in thought between the fundamental concepts and laws on the one side and, on the other, the conclusions which have to be brought into relation with our experience grows larger and larger, the simpler the logical structure becomes—that is to say, the smaller the number of logically independent conceptual elements which are found necessary to support the structure.”

—Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics”, 1934, reprinted in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1954.

“The aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension, as complete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations. (Seeking as far as possible, logical unity in the world picture, i.e., paucity in logical elements.)”

“Physics constitutes a logical system of thought which is in a state of evolution, whose basis cannot be distilled, as it were, from experience by an inductive method, but can only be arrived at by free invention… Evolution is proceeding in the direction of increased simplicity of the logical basis. In order further to approach this goal, we must resign to the fact that the logical basis departs more and more from the facts of experience, and that the path of our thought from the fundamental basis to those derived propositions, which correlate with sense experiences, becomes continually harder and longer.”

—Einstein, “Physics and Reality”, 1936, reprinted in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1954.

“\[S\]omething general will have to be said… about the points of view from which physical theories may be analyzed critically… The first point of view is obvious: the theory must not contradict empirical facts… The second point of view is not concerned with the relationship to the observations but with the premises of the theory itself, with what may briefly but vaguely be characterized as the ‘naturalness’ or ‘logical simplicity’ of the premises (the basic concepts and the relations between these)… We prize a theory more highly if, from the logical standpoint, it does not involve an arbitrary choice among theories that are equivalent and possess analogous structures… I must confess herewith that I cannot at this point, and perhaps not at all, replace these hints by more precise definitions. I believe, however, that a sharper formulation would be possible.”

—Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes”, originally published in Schilpp, Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, 1949, and reprinted as a separate book in 1979.

“What, then, impels us to devise theory after theory? Why do we devise theories at all? The answer to the latter question is simply: because we enjoy ‘comprehending,’ i.e., reducing phenomena by the process of logic to something already known or (apparently) evident. New theories are first of all necessary when we encounter new facts which cannot be ‘explained’ by existing theories. But this motivation for setting up new theories is, so to speak, trivial, imposed from without. There is another, more subtle motive of no less importance. This is the striving toward unification and simplification of the premises of the theory as a whole (i.e., Mach’s principle of economy, interpreted as a logical principle).”

“There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science. Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations—in short, by metaphysics. I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist, no matter how pure a ‘positivist’ he may fancy himself. The metaphysicist believes that the logically simple is also the real. The tamed metaphysicist believes that not all that is logically simple is embodied in experienced reality, but that the totality of all sensory experience can be ‘comprehended’ on the basis of a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity. The skeptic will say that this is a ‘miracle creed.’ Admittedly so, but it is a miracle creed which has been borne out to an amazing extent by the development of science.”

—Einstein, “On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation”, 1950, reprinted in Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1954.

“One of the most important things in this ‘guess—compute consequences—compare with experiment’ business is to know when you are right. It is possible to know when you are right way ahead of checking all the consequences. You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. It is always easy when you have made a guess, and done two or three little calculations to make sure that it is not obviously wrong, to know that it is right. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. Your guess is, in fact, that something is very simple. If you cannot see immediately that it is wrong, and it is simpler than it was before, then it is right. The inexperienced, and crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought. What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible strait-jacket. We have to find a new view of the world that has to agree with everything that is known, but disagree in its predictions somewhere, otherwise it is not interesting. And in that disagreement it must agree with nature…”

—Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 1965, Chapter 7, “Seeking New Laws”.

“It is natural that a man should consider the work of his hands or his brain to be useful and important. Therefore nobody will object to an ardent experimentalist boasting of his measurements and rather looking down on the ‘paper and ink’ physics of his theoretical friend, who on his part is proud of his lofty ideas and despises the dirty fingers of the other. But in recent years this kind of friendly rivalry has changed into something more serious… \[A\] school of extreme experimentalists… has gone so far as to reject theory altogether… There is also a movement in the opposite direction… claiming that to the mind well trained in mathematics and epistemology the laws of Nature are manifest without appeal to experiment.”

“Given the knowledge and the penetrating brain of our mathematician, Maxwell’s equations are a result of pure thinking and the toil of experimenters antiquated and superfluous. I need hardly explain to you the fallacy of this standpoint. It lies in the fact that none of the notions used by the mathematicians, such as potential, vector potential, field vectors, Lorentz transformations, quite apart from the principle of action itself, are evident or given a priori. Even if an extremely gifted mathematician had constructed them to describe the properties of a possible world, neither he nor anybody else would have had the slightest idea how to apply them to the real world.”

“Charles Darwin, my predecessor in my Edinburgh chair, once said something like this: ‘The Ordinary Man can see a thing an inch in front of his nose; a few can see things 2 inches distant; if anyone can see it at 3 inches, he is a man of genius.’ I have tried to describe to you some of the acts of these 2- or 3-inch men. My admiration of them is not diminished by the consciousness of the fact that they were guided by the experience of the whole human race to the right place into which to poke their noses. I have also not endeavoured to analyse the idea of beauty or perfection or simplicity of a natural law which has often guided the correct divination. I am convinced that such an analysis would lead to nothing; for these ideas are themselves subject to development. We learn something new from every new case, and I am not inclined to accept final theories about invariable laws of the human mind.”

“My advice to those who wish to learn the art of scientific prophecy is not to rely on abstract reason, but to decipher the secret language of Nature from Nature’s documents, the facts of experience.”

—Max Born, Experiment and Theory in Physics, 1943, pp. 1, 8, 34–35, 44.

These eloquent discussions of the role that simplicity and complexity play in scientific discovery by these distinguished 20th century scientists show the importance that they ascribe to these questions.

In my opinion, the fundamental point is this: The belief that the universe is rational, lawful, is of no value if the laws are too complicated for us to comprehend, and is even meaningless if the laws are as complicated as our observations, since the laws are then no simpler than the world they are supposed to explain. As we saw in the previous section, this was emphasized (and attributed to Leibniz) by Hermann Weyl, a fine mathematician and mathematical physicist.

But perhaps we are overemphasizing the role that the notions of simplicity and complexity play in science?

In his beautiful 1943 lecture published as a small book on Experiment and Theory in Physics, the theoretical physicist Max Born criticized those who think that we can understand Nature by pure thought, without hints from experiments. In particular, he was referring to now forgotten and rather fanciful theories put forth by Eddington and Milne. Now he might level these criticisms at string theory and at Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science \[Jacob T. Schwartz, private communication\].

Born has a point. Perhaps the universe is complicated, not simple! This certainly seems to be the case in biology more than in physics. Then thought alone is insufficient; we need empirical data. But simplicity certainly reflects what we mean by understanding: understanding is compression. So perhaps this is more about the human mind than it is about the universe. Perhaps our emphasis on simplicity says more about us than it says about the universe!

Now we’ll try to capture some of the essential features of these philosophical ideas in a mathematical theory.

## IV A Mathematical Theory of Simplicity, Complexity and Irreducibility: AIT

The basic idea of algorithmic information theory (AIT) is that a scientific theory is a computer program, and the smaller, the more concise the program is, the better the theory!

But the idea is actually much broader than that. The central idea of algorithmic information theory is reflected in the belief that the following diagrams all have something fundamental in common. In each case, ask how much information we put in versus how much we get out. And everything is digital, discrete.

Shannon information theory (communications engineering), noiseless coding:

encoded message $``$ Decoder $``$ original message

Model of scientific method:

scientific theory $``$ Calculations $``$ empirical/experimental data

Algorithmic information theory (AIT), definition of program-size complexity:

program $``$ Computer $``$ output

Central dogma of molecular biology:

DNA $``$ Embryogenesis/Development $``$ organism

(In this connection, see Küppers, Information and the Origin of Life, 1990.) Turing/Post abstract formulation of a Hilbert-style formal axiomatic mathematical theory as a mechanical procedure for systematically deducing all possible consequences from the axioms:

axioms $``$ Deduction $``$ theorems

Contemporary physicists’ efforts to find a Theory of Everything (TOE):

TOE $``$ Calculations $``$ Universe

Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686:

Ideas $``$ Mind of God $``$ The World

In each case the left-hand side is smaller, much smaller, than the right-hand side. In each case, the right-hand side can be constructed (re-constructed) mechanically, or systematically, from the left-hand side. And in each case we want to keep the right-hand side fixed while making the left-hand side as small as possible. Once this is accomplished, we can use the size of the left-hand side as a measure of the simplicity or the complexity of the corresponding right-hand side.

Starting with this one simple idea, of looking at the size of computer programs, or at program-size complexity, you can develop a sophisticated, elegant mathematical theory, AIT, as you can see in my four Springer-Verlag volumes listed in the bibliography of this paper.

But, I must confess that AIT makes a large number of important hidden assumptions! What are they?

Well, one important hidden assumption of AIT is that the choice of computer or of computer programming language is not too important, that it does not affect program-size complexity too much, in any fundamental way. This is debatable.

Another important tacit assumption: we use the discrete computation approach of Turing 1936, eschewing computations with “real” (infinite-precision) numbers like $`\pi `$ = 3.1415926… which have an infinite number of digits when written in decimal notation, but which correspond, from a geometrical point of view, to a single point on a line, an elemental notion in continuous, but not in discrete, mathematics. Is the universe discrete or continuous? Leibniz is famous for his work on continuous mathematics. AIT sides with the discrete, not with the continuous. \[Françoise Chaitin-Chatelin, private communication\]

Also, in AIT we completely ignore the time taken by a computation, concentrating only on the size of the program. And the computation run-times may be monstrously large, quite impracticably so, in fact, totally astronomical in size. But trying to take time into account destroys AIT, an elegant, simple theory of complexity, and one which imparts much intuitive understanding. So I think that it is a mistake to try to take time into account when thinking about this kind of complexity.

We’ve talked about simplicity and complexity, but what about irreducibility? Now let’s apply AIT to mathematical logic and obtain some limitative metatheorems. However, following Turing 1936 and Post 1944, I’ll use the notion of algorithm to deduce limits to formal reasoning, not Gödel’s original 1931 approach. I’ll take the position that a Hilbert-style mathematical theory, a formal axiomatic theory, is a mechanical procedure for systematically generating all the theorems by running through all possible proofs, systematically deducing all consequences of the axioms.131313In a way, this point of view was anticipated by Leibniz with his lingua characteristica universalis. Consider the size in bits of the algorithm for doing this. This is how we measure the simplicity or complexity of the formal axiomatic theory. It’s just another instance of program-size complexity!

But at this point, Chaitin-Chatelin insists, I should admit that we are making an extremely embarrassing hidden assumption, which is that you can systematically run through all the proofs. This assumption, which is bundled into my definition of a formal axiomatic theory, means that we are assuming that the language of our theory is static, and that no new concepts can ever emerge. But no human language or field of thought is static!141414And computer programming languages aren’t static either, which can be quite a nuisance. And this idea of being able to make a numbered list with all possible proofs was clearly anticipated by Émile Borel in 1927 when he pointed out that there is a real number with the problematical property that its $`N`$th digit after the decimal point gives us the answer to the $`N`$th yes/no question in French.151515Borel’s work was brought to my attention by Vladimir Tasić in his book Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, 2001, where he points out that in some ways it anticipates the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ number that I’ll discuss in Section IX. Borel’s paper is reprinted in Mancosu, From Brouwer to Hilbert, 1998, pp. 296–300.

Yes, I agree, a Hilbert-style formal axiomatic theory is indeed a fantasy, but it is a fantasy that inspired many people, and one that even helped to lead to the creation of modern programming languages. It is a fantasy that it is useful to take seriously long enough for us to show in Section VI that even if you are willing to accept all these tacit assumptions, something else is terribly wrong. Formal axiomatic theories can be criticized from within, as well as from without. And it is far from clear how weakening these tacit assumptions would make it easier to prove the irreducible mathematical truths that are exhibited in Section VI.

And the idea of a fixed, static computer programming language in which you write the computer programs whose size you measure is also a fantasy. Real computer programming languages don’t stand still, they evolve, and the size of the computer program you need to perform a given task can therefore change. Mathematical models of the world like these are always approximations, “lies that help us to see the truth” (Picasso). Nevertheless, if done properly, they can impart insight and understanding, they can help us to comprehend, they can reveal unexpected connections…

## V From Computational Irreducibility to Logical Irreducibility. Examples of Computational Irreducibility: “Elegant” Programs

Our goal in this section and the next is to use AIT to establish the existence of irreducible mathematical truths. What are they, and why are they important?

Following Euclid’s Elements, a mathematical truth is established by reducing it to simpler truths until self-evident truths—“axioms” or “postulates”161616Atoms of thought!—are reached. Here we exhibit an extremely large class of mathematical truths that are not at all self-evident but which are not consequences of any principles simpler than they are.

Irreducible truths are highly problematical for traditional philosophies of mathematics, but as discussed in Section VIII, they can be accommodated in an emerging “quasi-empirical” school of the foundations of mathematics, which says that physics and mathematics are not that different.

Our path to logical irreducibility starts with computational irreducibility. Let’s start by calling a computer program “elegant” if no smaller program in the same language produces exactly the same output. There are lots of elegant programs, at least one for each output. And it doesn’t matter how slow an elegant program is, all that matters is that it be as small as possible.

An elegant program viewed as an object in its own right is computationally irreducible.  Why? Because otherwise you can get a more concise program for its output by computing it first and then running it. Look at this diagram:

program2 $``$ Computer $``$ program1 $``$ Computer $``$ output

If program1 is as concise as possible, then program2 cannot be much more concise than program1. Why? Well, consider a fixed-sized routine for running a program and then immediately running its output. Then

program2 \+ fixed-size routine $``$ Computer $``$ output

produces exactly the same output as program1 and would be a more concise program for producing that output than program1 is. But this is impossible because it contradicts our hypothesis that program1 was already as small as possible. Q.E.D.

Why should elegant programs interest philosophers? Well, because of Occam’s razor, because the best theory to explain a fixed set of data is an elegant program!

But how can we get irreducible truths? Well, just try proving that a program is elegant!

## VI Irreducible Mathematical Truths. Examples of Logical Irreducibility: Proving a Program is Elegant

Hauptsatz: You cannot prove that a program is elegant if its size is substantially larger than the size of the algorithm for generating all the theorems in your theory.

Proof: The basic idea is to run the first provably elegant program you encounter when you systematically generate all the theorems, and that is substantially larger than the size of the algorithm for generating all the theorems. Contradiction, unless no such theorem can be demonstrated, or unless the theorem is false.

Now I’ll explain why this works. We are given a formal axiomatic mathematical theory:

theory = program $``$ Computer $``$ set of all theorems

We may suppose that this theory is an elegant program, i.e., as concise as possible for producing the set of theorems that it does. Then the size of this program is by definition the complexity of the theory, since it is the size of the smallest program for systematically generating the set of all the theorems, which are all the consequences of the axioms. Now consider a fixed-size routine with the property that

theory + fixed-size routine $``$ Computer $``$

output of the first provably elegant program larger than

complexity of theory

More precisely,

theory + fixed-size routine $``$ Computer $``$

output of the first provably elegant program larger than

(complexity of theory + size of the fixed-size routine)

This proves our assertion that a mathematical theory cannot prove that a program is elegant if that program is substantially larger than the complexity of the theory.

Here is the proof of this result in more detail. The fixed-size routine knows its own size and is given the theory, a computer program for generating theorems, whose size it measures and which it then runs, until the first theorem is encountered asserting that a particular program $`P`$ is elegant that is larger than the total input to the computer. The fixed-size routine then runs the program $`P`$, and finally produces as output the same output as $`P`$ produces. But this is impossible, because the output from $`P`$ cannot be obtained from a program that is smaller than $`P`$ is, not if, as we assume by hypothesis, all the theorems of the theory are true and $`P`$ is actually elegant. Therefore $`P`$ cannot exist. In other words, if there is a provably elegant program $`P`$ whose size is greater than the complexity of the theory + the size of this fixed-size routine, either $`P`$ is actually inelegant or we have a contradiction. Q.E.D.

Because no mathematical theory of finite complexity can enable you to determine all the elegant programs, the following is immediate:

Corollary: The mathematical universe has infinite complexity.171717On the other hand, our current mathematical theories are not very complex. On pages 773–774 of A New Kind of Science, Wolfram makes this point by exhibiting essentially all of the axioms for traditional mathematics—in just two pages! However, a program to generate all the theorems would be larger.

This strengthens Gödel’s 1931 refutation of Hilbert’s belief that a single, fixed formal axiomatic theory could capture all of mathematical truth.

Given the significance of this conclusion, it is natural to demand more information. You’ll notice that I never said which computer programming language I was using!

Well, you can actually carry out this proof using either high-level languages such as the version of LISP that I use in The Unknowable, or using low-level binary machine languages, such as the one that I use in The Limits of Mathematics. In the case of a high-level computer programming language, one measures the size of a program in characters (or 8-bit bytes) of text. In the case of a binary machine language, one measures the size of a program in 0/1 bits. My proof works either way.

But I must confess that not all programming languages permit my proof to work out this neatly. The ones that do are the kinds of programming languages that you use in AIT, the ones for which program-size complexity has elegant properties instead of messy ones, the ones that directly expose the fundamental nature of this complexity concept (which is also called algorithmic information content), not the programming languages that bury the basic idea in a mass of messy technical details.

This paper started with philosophy, and then we developed a mathematical theory. Now let’s go back to philosophy. In the last three sections of this paper we’ll discuss the philosophical implications of AIT.

## VII Could We Ever Be Sure that We Had the Ultimate TOE? \[Barrow 1995\]

“The search for a ‘Theory of Everything’ is the quest for an ultimate compression of the world. Interestingly, Chaitin’s proof of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem using the concepts of complexity and compression reveals that Gödel’s theorem is equivalent to the fact that one cannot prove a sequence to be incompressible. We can never prove a compression to be the ultimate one; there might be a yet deeper and simpler unification waiting to be found.”

—John Barrow, essay on “Theories of Everything” in Cornwell, Nature’s Imagination, 1995, reprinted in Barrow, Between Inner Space and Outer Space, 1999.

Here is the first philosophical application of AIT. According to astrophysicist John Barrow, my work implies that even if we had the optimum, perfect, minimal (elegant!) TOE, we could never be sure a simpler theory would not have the same explanatory power.

(“Explanatory power” is a pregnant phrase, and one can make a case that it is a better name to use than the dangerous word “complexity”, which has many other possible meanings. One could then speak of a theory with $`N`$ bits of algorithmic explanatory power, rather than describe it as a theory having a program-size complexity of $`N`$ bits. \[Françoise Chaitin-Chatelin, private communication\])

Well, you can dismiss Barrow by saying that the idea of having the ultimate TOE is pretty crazy—who expects to be able to read the mind of God?! Actually, Wolfram believes that a systematic computer search might well find the ultimate TOE.181818See pages 465–471, 1024–1027 of A New Kind of Science. I hope he continues working on this project!

In fact, Wolfram thinks that he not only might be able to find the ultimate TOE, he might even be able to show that it is the simplest possible TOE! How does he escape the impact of my results? Why doesn’t Barrow’s observation apply here?

First of all, Wolfram is not very interested in proofs, he prefers computational evidence. Second, Wolfram does not use program-size complexity as his complexity measure. He uses much more down-to-earth complexity measures. Third, he is concerned with extremely simple systems, while my methods apply best to objects with high complexity.

Perhaps the best way to explain the difference is to say that he is looking at “hardware” complexity, and I’m looking at “software” complexity. The objects he studies have complexity less than or equal to that of a universal computer. Those I study have complexity much larger than a universal computer. For Wolfram, a universal computer is the maximum possible complexity, and for me it is the minimum possible complexity.

Anyway, now let’s see what’s the message from AIT for the working mathematician.

## VIII Should Mathematics Be More Like Physics? Must Mathematical Axioms Be Self-Evident?

“A deep but easily understandable problem about prime numbers is used in the following to illustrate the parallelism between the heuristic reasoning of the mathematician and the inductive reasoning of the physicist… \[M\]athematicians and physicists think alike; they are led, and sometimes misled, by the same patterns of plausible reasoning.”

—George Pólya, “Heuristic Reasoning in the Theory of Numbers”, 1959, reprinted in Alexanderson, The Random Walks of George Pólya, 2000.

“The role of heuristic arguments has not been acknowledged in the philosophy of mathematics, despite the crucial role that they play in mathematical discovery. The mathematical notion of proof is strikingly at variance with the notion of proof in other areas… Proofs given by physicists do admit degrees: of two proofs given of the same assertion of physics, one may be judged to be more correct than the other.”

—Gian-Carlo Rota, “The Phenomenology of Mathematical Proof”, 1997, reprinted in Jacquette, Philosophy of Mathematics, 2002, and in Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts, 1997.

“There are two kinds of ways of looking at mathematics… the Babylonian tradition and the Greek tradition… Euclid discovered that there was a way in which all the theorems of geometry could be ordered from a set of axioms that were particularly simple… The Babylonian attitude… is that you know all of the various theorems and many of the connections in between, but you have never fully realized that it could all come up from a bunch of axioms… \[E\]ven in mathematics you can start in different places… In physics we need the Babylonian method, and not the Euclidian or Greek method.”

—Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 1965, Chapter 2, “The Relation of Mathematics to Physics”.

“The physicist rightly dreads precise argument, since an argument which is only convincing if precise loses all its force if the assumptions upon which it is based are slightly changed, while an argument which is convincing though imprecise may well be stable under small perturbations of its underlying axioms.”

—Jacob Schwartz, “The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics on Science”, 1960, reprinted in Kac, Rota, Schwartz, Discrete Thoughts, 1992.

“It is impossible to discuss realism in logic without drawing in the empirical sciences… A truly realistic mathematics should be conceived, in line with physics, as a branch of the theoretical construction of the one real world and should adopt the same sober and cautious attitude toward hypothetic extensions of its foundation as is exhibited by physics.”

—Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 1949, Appendix A, “Structure of Mathematics”, p. 235.

The above quotations are eloquent testimonials to the fact that although mathematics and physics are different, maybe they are not that different! Admittedly, math organizes our mathematical experience, which is mental or computational, and physics organizes our physical experience.191919And in physics everything is an approximation, no equation is exact. They are certainly not exactly the same, but maybe it’s a matter of degree, a continuum of possibilities, and not an absolute, black and white difference.

Certainly, as both fields are currently practiced, there is a definite difference in style. But that could change, and is to a certain extent a matter of fashion, not a fundamental difference.

A good source of essays that I—but perhaps not the authors!—regard as generally supportive of the position that math be considered a branch of physics is Tymoczko, New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics, 1998. In particular there you will find an essay by Lakatos giving the name “quasi-empirical” to this view of the nature of the mathematical enterprise.

Why is my position on math “quasi-empirical”? Because, as far as I can see, this is the only way to accommodate the existence of irreducible mathematical facts gracefully. Physical postulates are never self-evident, they are justified pragmatically, and so are close relatives of the not at all self-evident irreducible mathematical facts that I exhibited in Section VI.

I’m not proposing that math is a branch of physics just to be controversial. I was forced to do this against my will! This happened in spite of the fact that I’m a mathematician and I love mathematics, and in spite of the fact that I started with the traditional Platonist position shared by most working mathematicians. I’m proposing this because I want mathematics to work better and be more productive. Proofs are fine, but if you can’t find a proof, you should go ahead using heuristic arguments and conjectures.

Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science also supports an experimental, quasi-empirical way of doing mathematics. This is partly because Wolfram is a physicist, partly because he believes that unprovable truths are the rule, not the exception, and partly because he believes that our current mathematical theories are highly arbitrary and contingent. Indeed, his book may be regarded as a very large chapter in experimental math. In fact, he had to develop his own programming language, Mathematica, to be able to do the massive computations that led him to his conjectures.

See also Tasić, Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, 2001, for an interesting perspective on intuition versus formalism. This is a key question—indeed in my opinion it’s an inescapable issue—in any discussion of how the game of mathematics should be played. And it’s a question with which I, as a working mathematician, am passionately concerned, because, as we discussed in Section VI, formalism has severe limitations. Only intuition can enable us to go forward and create new ideas and more powerful formalisms.

And what are the wellsprings of mathematical intuition and creativity? In his important forthcoming book on creativity, Tor Nørretranders makes the case that a peacock, an elegant, graceful woman, and a beautiful mathematical theory, are all shaped by the same forces, namely what Darwin referred to as “sexual selection”. Hopefully this book will be available soon in a language other than Danish! Meanwhile, see my dialogue with him in my book Conversations with a Mathematician.

Now, for our last topic, let’s look at the entire physical universe!

## IX Is the Universe Like $`\pi `$ or Like $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$? Reason versus Randomness! \[Brisson, Meyerstein 1995\]

“Parce qu’on manquait d’une définition rigoreuse de complexité, celle qu’a proposée la TAI \[théorie algorithmique de l’information\], confondre $`\pi `$ avec $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ a été plutôt la règle que l’exception. Croire, parce que nous avons ici affaire à une croyance, que toutes les suites, puisqu’elles ne sont que l’enchaînement selon une règle rigoureuse de symboles déterminés, peuvent toujours être comprimées en quelque chose de plus simple, voilà la source de l’erreur du réductionnisme. Admettre la complexité a toujours paru insupportable aux philosophes, car c’était renoncer à trouver un sens rationnel à la vie des hommes.”

—Brisson, Meyerstein, Puissance et Limites de la Raison, 1995, “Postface. L’erreur du réductionnisme”, p. 229.

First let me explain what the number $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is. It’s the jewel in AIT’s crown, and it’s a number that has attracted a great deal of attention, because it’s a very dangerous number! $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is defined to be the halting probability of what computer scientists call a universal computer, or universal Turing machine.202020In fact, the precise value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ actually depends on the choice of computer, and in The Limits of Mathematics I’ve done that, I’ve picked one out. So $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a probability and therefore it’s a real number, a number measured with infinite precision, that’s between zero and one.212121It’s ironic that the star of a discrete theory is a real number! This illustrates the creative tension between the continuous and the discrete. That may not sound too dangerous!

What’s dangerous about $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is that (a) it has a simple, straightforward mathematical definition, but at the same time (b) its numerical value is maximally unknowable, because a formal mathematical theory whose program-size complexity or explanatory power is $`N`$ bits cannot enable you to determine more than $`N`$ bits of the base-two expansion of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$! In other words, if you want to calculate $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, theories don’t help very much, since it takes $`N`$ bits of theory to get $`N`$ bits of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In fact, the base-two bits of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are maximally complex, there’s no redundancy, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the prime example of how unadulterated infinite complexity arises in pure mathematics!

How about $`\pi `$ = 3.1415926… the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter? Well, $`\pi `$ looks pretty complicated, pretty lawless. For example, all its digits seem to be equally likely,222222In any base all the digits of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are equally likely. This is called “Borel normality”. For a proof, see my book Exploring Randomness. For the latest on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, see Calude, Information and Randomness. although this has never been proven.232323Amazingly enough, there’s been some recent progress in this direction by Bailey and Crandall. If you are given a bunch of digits from deep inside the decimal expansion of $`\pi `$, and you aren’t told where they come from, there doesn’t seem to be any redundancy, any pattern. But of course, according to AIT, $`\pi `$ in fact only has finite complexity, because there are algorithms for calculating it with arbitrary precision.242424In fact, some terrific new ways to calculate $`\pi `$ have been discovered by Bailey, Borwein and Plouffe. $`\pi `$ lives, it’s not a dead subject!

Following Brisson, Meyerstein, Puissance et Limites de la Raison, 1995, let’s now finally discuss whether the physical universe is like $`\pi `$ = 3.1415926… which only has a finite complexity, namely the size of the smallest program to generate $`\pi `$, or like $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, which has unadulterated infinite complexity. Which is it?!

Well, if you believe in quantum physics, then Nature plays dice, and that generates complexity, an infinite amount of it, for example, as frozen accidents, mutations that are preserved in our DNA. So at this time most scientists would bet that the universe has infinite complexity, like $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ does. But then the world is incomprehensible, or at least a large part of it will always remain so, the accidental part, all those frozen accidents, the contingent part.

But some people still hope that the world has finite complexity like $`\pi `$, it just looks like it has high complexity. If so, then we might eventually be able to comprehend everything, and there is an ultimate TOE! But then you have to believe that quantum mechanics is wrong, as currently practiced, and that all that quantum randomness is really only pseudo-randomness, like what you find in the digits of $`\pi `$. You have to believe that the world is actually deterministic, even though our current scientific theories say that it isn’t!

I think Vienna physicist Karl Svozil feels that way \[private communication; see his Randomness & Undecidability in Physics, 1994\]. I know Stephen Wolfram does, he says so in his book. Just take a look at the discussion of fluid turbulence and of the second law of thermodynamics in A New Kind of Science. Wolfram believes that very simple deterministic algorithms ultimately account for all the apparent complexity we see around us, just like they do in $`\pi `$.252525In fact, Wolfram himself explicitly makes the connection with $`\pi `$. See meaning of the universe on page 1027 of A New Kind of Science. He believes that the world looks very complicated, but is actually very simple. There’s no randomness, there’s only pseudo-randomness. Then nothing is contingent, everything is necessary, everything happens for a reason. \[Leibniz!\]

Who knows! Time will tell!

Or perhaps from inside this world we will never be able to tell the difference, only an outside observer could do that \[Svozil, private communication\].

## Postscript

Readers of this paper may enjoy the somewhat different perspective in my chapter “Complexité, logique et hasard” in Benkirane, La Complexité. Leibniz is there too.

In addition, see my Conversations with a Mathematician, a book on philosophy disguised as a series of dialogues—not the first time that this has happened!

Last but not least, see Zwirn, Les Limites de la Connaissance, that also supports the thesis that understanding is compression, and the masterful multi-author two-volume work, Kurt Gödel, Wahrheit & Beweisbarkeit, a treasure trove of information about Gödel’s life and work.

## Acknowledgement

Thanks to Tor Nørretranders for providing the original German for the Einstein quotation at the beginning of this paper, and also the word for word translation.

The author is grateful to Françoise Chaitin-Chatelin for innumerable stimulating philosophical discussions. He dedicates this paper to her unending quest to understand.

## Bibliography

* Gerald W. Alexanderson, The Random Walks of George Pólya, MAA, 2000.
* John D. Barrow, Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press, 1986.
* John D. Barrow, Between Inner Space and Outer Space, Oxford University Press, 1999.
* Reda Benkirane, La Complexité, Vertiges et Promesses, Le Pommier, 2002.
* Max Born, Experiment and Theory in Physics, Cambridge University Press, 1943. Reprinted by Dover, 1956.
* Luc Brisson, F. Walter Meyerstein, Inventer l’Univers, Les Belles Lettres, 1991.
* Luc Brisson, F. Walter Meyerstein, Inventing the Universe, SUNY Press, 1995.
* Luc Brisson, F. Walter Meyerstein, Puissance et Limites de la Raison, Les Belles Lettres, 1995.
* F. Bródy, T. Vámos, The Neumann Compendium, World Scientific, 1995.
* Bernd Buldt et al., Kurt Gödel, Wahrheit & Beweisbarkeit. Band 2: Kompendium zum Werk, öbv & hpt, 2002.
* Cristian S. Calude, Information and Randomness, Springer-Verlag, 2002.
* Gregory J. Chaitin, The Limits of Mathematics, The Unknowable, Exploring Randomness, Conversations with a Mathematician, Springer-Verlag, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002.
* John Cornwell, Nature’s Imagination, Oxford University Press, 1995.
* COSRIMS, The Mathematical Sciences, MIT Press, 1969.
* Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Crown, 1954. Reprinted by Modern Library, 1994.
* Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, Open Court, 1979.
* Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, MIT Press, 1965. Reprinted by Modern Library, 1994, with a thoughtful introduction by James Gleick.
* Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Addison-Wesley, 1963.
* Dale Jacquette, Philosophy of Mathematics, Blackwell, 2002.
* Mark Kac, Gian-Carlo Rota, Jacob T. Schwartz, Discrete Thoughts, Birkhäuser, 1992.
* Eckehart Köhler et al., Kurt Gödel, Wahrheit & Beweisbarkeit. Band 1: Dokumente und historische Analysen, öbv & hpt, 2002.
* Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Information and the Origin of Life, MIT Press, 1990.
* G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, Hackett, 1989.
* Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics, Open Court, 1893.
* Paolo Mancosu, From Brouwer to Hilbert, Oxford University Press, 1998.
* Karl Menger, Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle and the Mathematical Colloquium, Kluwer, 1994.
* James R. Newman, The World of Mathematics, Simon and Schuster, 1956. Reprinted by Dover, 2000.
* Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson Education, 1959. Reprinted by Routledge, 1992.
* Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts, Birkhäuser, 1997.
* Paul Arthur Schilpp, Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, Open Court, 1949.
* Karl Svozil, Randomness & Undecidability in Physics, World Scientific, 1994.
* Vladimir Tasić, Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, Oxford University Press, 2001.
* Thomas Tymoczko, New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Princeton University Press, 1998.
* Hermann Weyl, The Open World, Yale University Press, 1932. Reprinted by Ox Bow Press, 1989.
* Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, Princeton University Press, 1949.
* Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, 2002.
* Hervé Zwirn, Les Limites de la Connaissance, Odile Jacob, 2000.


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# Uncertainties of Synthetic Integrated Colors as Age Indicators

## 1 Introduction

Age determination of various stellar populations enhances our understanding not only on the evolution of stars and galaxies but also on cosmology. Population synthesis has been a very popular tool to do just this. For decades, however, the ages of stellar populations inferred by population synthesis studies based on the stellar evolution theory have been a factor of two larger than the age of the universe suggested by standard Big Bang cosmology models. This is often called “the age paradox”. This has made the efforts to understand the evolution of galaxies and cosmology by means of measuring their ages appear hopeless.

At last, the stellar evolution theory and cosmology seem to agree upon the age of the universe. Various improvements in input physics have caused significant changes in stellar models. As a result, the latest isochrone studies — currently the most reliable age dating technique — now yield approximately 20% smaller ages for Galactic globular clusters than previously derived (see Yi et al. 2001). At the same time, observational cosmologists found a strong evidence of anti-gravity force operating in the universe, which indicates a substantially larger age for the universe than predicted by the classic, matter-dominating flat universe model (Schmidt et al. 1998; Perlmutter et al. 1999). Although such an agreement does not validate either approach by any means, it may imply that both of these fields have matured enough that the predictions from stellar astrophysics can be compared with observational data with good reliability and perhaps can even be used to test cosmological models. Such predictions are basically temperatures, luminosities, and lifetimes at each evolutionary stage, in addition to the overall evolutionary pattern. These predictions are being tested in numerous studies mostly by isochrone users, and the agreement between models and observed data achieved so far seems quite encouraging (see Yi et al. 2001).

The isochrone-fitting technique currently cannot reach a target object beyond the distance to the Magellanic Clouds, however, because such distant populations are not spatially resolved. Thus, astronomers instead construct synthetic models for integrated properties based on the predictions from stellar astrophysics and use them to measure the ages of unresolved populations. Such efforts are made not only on simple systems, such as star clusters, but also on complex galaxy systems. For their capability to reach far in time and space and for being easy for application, synthetic colors are more popular than ever before. However, without assessing their reliability (or uncertainty) first, the level of significance of the analyses is hard to quantify. For example, despite the apparent success of the latest isochrone fits, stellar astrophysicists still believe that there are many important pieces of information that are missing in the stellar model construction process. Some of these uncertainties may have significant impacts on the population analyses that are based on synthetic colors. Yi et al. (2001) recently showed that their population synthesis models based on the latest isochrones yielded consistent ages on Galactic globular clusters to their isochrone-based ages (see their Figure 18). It is the goal of this paper to investigate the impacts of such uncertainties on such age derivations for various populations.

In this paper, we investigate three different categories of uncertainties. In §2, we demonstrate the effects of various input parameters and assumptions that are still poorly understood. First, the uncertainties in the stellar models. These are basically the problems related to the solar calibration, including the current approximation schemes for convection and the uniform scaling assumption for the chemical compositions. Second are the uncertainties in the synthetic model construction. Most notable of these are initial mass function (IMF) and mass loss. Last, but not least, are the uncertainties in the stellar spectral library. In §3, we translate such uncertainties into the uncertainties in the age estimations based on synthetic colors.

It was Charlot, Worthey, & Bressan (1996) that first performed a comprehensive investigation on the uncertainties of the synthetic models. They studied the uncertainties that come from using different sets of stellar models and stellar spectral libraries. In a way, our study is in the same spirit. The major difference is that we investigate the effect of each individual physical assumption separately. We then estimate the uncertainties in the final age estimates stemming from each source of uncertainty. This study is only for “simple” (single age and metallicity) stellar populations, and there are further sources of uncertainties in modeling composite populations, e.g., from star formation history and galactic chemical evolution. Through this study, we hope to provide both synthetic model builders and users with some guidelines as to what levels of certainties and limits they should expect from the models they deal with.

## 2 Uncertainties in Input Physics

### 2.1 Uncertainties in the Stellar Models

The most fundamental problem in building stellar models is that there is no strong physical justification for “the solar calibration”. There still are several important pieces of input physics that need to be understood further in order for us to achieve realistic stellar models. Most significant of all are convection and chemical evolution. Without knowing the underlying physics in such complex mechanisms, we try to find a solution that works for the sun. First, we assume that we know the luminosity, radius, and the age of the sun. This is already risky, because the solar luminosity measurements may be uncertain by as much as 1%. Next, we try to match the solar observables with models by fiddling with poorly-constrained input parameters, such as convection efficiency and chemical compositions. As a result of this step, we have a set of input parameters that works for the sun. We then apply it to all stars that have completely different physical and chemical properties. The danger of the solar calibration is well known to stellar astrophysicists. In fact, the sun may not even be a typical star. In this section, we investigate the sensitivity of synthetic population models to uncertainties in the current convection treatments and in the heavy element mixture. All models shown in this section are based on the assumption of a Salpeter IMF index (2.35), a mass loss efficiency $`\eta =0.65`$ and a dispersion $`\sigma =0.02`$$`M_{}`$, and the Lejeune et al.’s revised Kurucz spectral library (see §2.2 and 2.3).

#### 2.1.1 Mixing Length Approximation (MLA)

Standard stellar models are still based on the half-a-century-old Mixing Length Approximation (MLA) for describing the convective energy transport. Within the framework of MLA, we assume a fixed value of the ratio of mixing length to pressure scale height, $`l/H_p`$ (also known as “the mixing length parameter”, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$) that directs convection in the same manner in all different environments. The mixing length parameter primarily governs the stellar radius, and we find this value from the solar calibration. Obviously, there is a problem in this approach.

MLA is not a forward physical description, but a parameterisation. Thus, even if it can be justified in sun-like stars, it may break down in environments that are different from that of the sun. Such environments may include not only chemically-different stars but also different evolutionary stages of the same star. Although there are efforts to find more realistic descriptions of convection than MLA (e.g., Nordlund & Dravins 1990; Canuto 1990; Kim et al. 1996; Freytag, Ludwig, & Steffen 1966), there has not yet been a release of a comprehensive set of stellar models based on a more mature convection prescription. Therefore, it is important to understand the acceptable range of the mixing length parameter within the framework of MLA and its impact on the reliability of synthetic population models.

Figure 1 shows the effects of the mixing length parameter to the shape of isochrones at two ages. A larger value of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$ causes a more efficient energy transport and thus the stellar models to appear hotter (bluer). The larger value (1.74) is currently the favoured value of the Yale-Yonsei collaboration (Yi et al. 2001) for matching the solar properties. Currently, the uncertainties in other input parameters (e.g., metal-to-hydrogen ratio measured in the sun, and solar helium abundance) prevent an accurate determination of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$. However, all latest calibrations are clustered around $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}1.5`$ – 2.0 (e.g., Girardi et al. 2000; Vandenberg et al. 2000). Thus, our investigation with two values (1.74 and 1.5) well-represent a mean and one extreme case.

The effects of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$, which is not sensitive to age, naturally translates into uncertainties in the spectral energy distribution, as shown in Figure 2. The fluxes are normalized to the $`V`$-band flux of our standard model, i.e., that of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$=1.74. The synthetic spectral energy distribution with a larger value of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$ appears hotter. Figure 3 shows the color evolution of a sample population of a typical metallicity of Galactic globular clusters, i.e., \[Fe/H\]=$``$1.3. The $`m(1500)V`$ is defined as

$$m(1500)V=2.5log\frac{<f_{1500}>}{<f_V>}$$
(1)
where $`<f_{1500}>`$ and $`<f_V>`$ are defined by averaging the flux within the ranges 1250 $``$ 1850 Å and and 5055 $``$ 5945 Å, respectively.

The difference in optical and near-infrared colors ($`UBVRI`$) seems insignificant at first sight. However, the color evolution with time is so small that even such small uncertainties in synthetic colors can translate into substantial uncertainties in the age estimate. For example, when $`VI`$is used, the uncertainty in the mixing length parameter alone can cause up to a 25% uncertainty in the age estimate.

It should also be noted that for low metallicities and for the age range shown here, U Bis not a good age indicator at all, because it does not behave linearly with decreasing main-sequence (MS) turn-off (MSTO) temperature (i.e., increasing age) under such conditions.

#### 2.1.2 Convective Core Overshoot

Another important source of uncertainty in convection is the amount of convective core overshoot (hereafter, OS). Convective core overshoot, the importance of which was first pointed out by Shaviv & Salpeter (1973), is the inertia-induced penetrative motion of convective cells, reaching beyond the convective core as defined by the classic Schwarzschild criterion. Stars develop convective cores if their masses are larger than approximately 1 – 2 $`M_{}`$, typical for the MSTO stars in 1 – 5 Gyr-old populations, depending on their chemical compositions. Since the advent of the OPAL opacities, various studies have suggested a modest amount of OS; that is, OS $`0.2H_p`$, where $`H_p`$ is pressure scale height (see references in Yi et al. 2001). Thus, we have adopted OS=0.2 in our standard models. OS has many effects on stellar evolution. Among the most notable are its effects on the shape of the MSTO and on the ratio of lifetimes spent in the core hydrogen burning stage (i.e., the MS phase) and in the shell hydrogen burning stage (the red giant branch: RGB). The impacts of such effects on the isochrone and on the integrated spectrum have been discussed by Yi et al. (2000).

OS is by definition effective only for the stars massive enough to develop a convective core, so its effects are visible only in young populations. Figures 4 – 6 show that the effects are clearly visible in 1 Gyr models. But they quickly disappear already at 2 Gyr as soon as MSTO stars begin to have a radiative core. Accurate borders depend on the metallicity in question, as listed in Table 2 of Yi et al. (2001). Young populations with the effects of OS display bluer spectra. The effects of OS may appear negligible but are important in the age estimation of such young populations. In particular, Yi et al. (2000) demonstrated that precise age derivations for high-$`z`$ galaxies, which is a powerful method for constraining the galaxy formation epoch (Dunlop et al. 1996), are heavily subject to this uncertainty.

#### 2.1.3 Chemical Composition

The chemical composition has many important impacts on stellar evolution. The first is on the nuclear energy generation. For example, the CNO cycle uses CNO elements as catalysts, and thus their higher abundance causes a more effective energy generation if the right conditions are met. Another effect is on the opacity. Atoms with many possible transitions (most notably Fe) are particularly important, because a small increase in their abundance can raise opacity significantly. Increase in opacity obviously causes the spectrum to appear redder, but it also governs the energy transport and energy generation.

The effects of helium abundance are not to be ignored, either. In the stellar cores in most evolutionary stages, helium abundance is the key factor in opacity and determines the internal temperature profile, which controls energy generation rates. For this reason, helium abundance primarily determines the pace of stellar evolution. However, this effect is strong only at metallicities above solar. Since this study is more focused on low metallicities (approximately solar and below solar), the uncertainty caused by the helium abundance is not explored in this paper.

Despite these potential complexities, the concept of metallicity often seems to be adopted too naively. Metallicity is generally given only in $`Z`$ or in \[Fe/H\], but departures in some elements from this mean quantity (usually solar) cause important changes in stellar evolution. Most notable is perhaps the $`\alpha `$-element enhancement, which is ubiquitous in metal-poor stars and perhaps in super-metal-rich environments as well.

It is a common misconception that $`\alpha `$-enhancement changes the stellar evolution in a very mysterious way. Figure 7 shows two isochrones with and without $`\alpha `$-enhancement but for the same total $`Z`$. We are basically comparing two models of the same total metallicity in total metal abundance $`Z`$ but of different $`\alpha `$-element abundances. In other words, the $`\alpha `$-enhanced models have higher abundances in $`\alpha `$-elements but lower abundances in other heavy elements. This figure shows no detectable difference. This implies that $`\alpha `$-enhanced models can be mimicked by more metal-rich standard (non-$`\alpha `$-enhanced) models after an appropriate scaling, such as the one suggested by Salaris, Chieffi, & Straniero (1993). So, when we compare two metal-poor models with the same total metal abundance, $`\alpha `$-enhancement does not cause a significant difference in stellar evolution models. Naturally, little difference is expected in the color evolution models and in the age estimates based on them, either. The effect of $`\alpha `$-enhancement is somewhat more conspicuous when metallicity is equal or higher than a solar value; $`\alpha `$-enhanced stellar models are somewhat bluer. But, the magnitude of the difference is still small.

### 2.2 Uncertainties in the Synthetic Model Construction

The synthetic population models shown in the previous section are all based on popular choices of the input parameters used in the population synthesis; that is, the Salpeter initial mass function, and the mass loss parameters that reproduce the horizontal-branch (HB) morphology of Galactic globular clusters. However, whether such choices are valid in all populations is debatable. In this section, we investigate the contribution of the population synthesis input parameters to the uncertainty of synthetic colors. All models shown in this section are based on the assumption of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{MLA}}`$=1.74, OS=0.2, and \[$`\alpha `$/Fe\]=0 (see §2.1).

#### 2.2.1 Initial Mass Function (IMF)

Since its first introduction by Salpeter (1955), the Salpeter IMF has been the most popular ingredient in galaxy population synthesis studies. However, whether the same slope derived from the local population would be valid for describing different populations formed in different environments is debatable. Besides, the departure of the IMF from the power law below approximately a solar mass is no longer beyond any doubt (e.g., Miller & Scalo 1979; Kroupa, Tout, & Gilmore 1990). A single power-law with one slope is not an accurate representation of the true IMF, and it may lead to seriously inaccurate synthetic models. Thus, we investigate the effects of IMF by choosing three significantly different IMF slopes in the context of the power law: 1.35, 2.35 (Salpeter), and 3.35.

The low-mass departure is not a serious issue in the integrated luminosity evolution of a population, because such low-mass stars are in the faint, MS stage during the most of the age range that we are interested in. For the age range that we are studying in this paper — i.e., 1 through 15 Gyr (or, a MSTO mass range of 2 – 0.9$`M_{}`$), the Salpeter slope (2.35) appears to be a good approximation (Sagar, Munari, & de Boer 2001). Thus, the range of slope we have chosen seems sufficiently large to represent the uncertainty of the IMF slope.

Figure 8 shows the effect of the IMF slope to the integrated spectra. The comparison is shown for two ages (3 and 10 Gyr). Two dotted lines are the models for the smaller IMF slope. Younger models are normalized to the $`V`$-band flux of their older (10 Gyr) model. Two old models with different IMF slopes are on top of another, being indistinguishable. The difference in luminosity evolution is notable. When the IMF slope is uncertain by 1.0, as shown here, the luminosity evolution model is uncertain by 0.5 mag between the two epochs of 3 Gyr and 10 Gyr of ages; figuratively speaking, between redshift 1 and 0 (assuming a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated flat universe). This difference in the luminosity evolution, 0.5 mag, is approximately half of the luminosity evolution observed in elliptical galaxies that are often believed to have been passively evolving. Thus, it is extremely important to learn about the true IMF in order to interpret the observed luminosity evolution correctly. If the true IMF slopes for old populations (formed at high redshifts) were different from that of the local field stellar sample (such as the Salpeter slope), such simplistic approaches in interpreting luminosity evolution data are bound to be misleading.

The impact of the IMF slope also appears in the color evolution, although less severely. Figure 9 shows this. Synthetic models become redder as a smaller IMF slope is used, because a smaller slope means a larger number density of more massive MS stars, which evolve faster to become red giants.

#### 2.2.2 Mass Loss Efficiency

Another key area of uncertainty is the treatment of mass loss on the giant branch, which predominantly governs the temperatures of post-giant branch stars. Post-giant branch stars account for 30% of the total light in the $`V`$-band at a 2 Gyr age, and 40% in the near UV at 12 Gyr; and, thus, outdated values for mass loss lead to serious errors in the flux distribution.

Whether the Reimers (1975) empirical formula is valid for the mass loss in all stars is debated (see references in Willson 2000). Most of the empirical mass loss measurements are conducted on high-mass (above solar) asymptotic giant branch stars, and it may not accurately describe the mass loss that takes place on the RGB of low-mass stars. Yet, it is still the most popular prescription in population synthesis studies. Reimers’ empirical formula is as follows:

$$\frac{dM}{dt}=4\times \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}\eta \frac{L}{gR},$$
(2)
where $`L`$ is the luminosity, $`g`$ is the surface gravity, and $`R`$ is the radius.

Even when we assume that Reimers’ formula provides a good approximation, its fitting parameter $`\eta `$ is still somewhat uncertain. Renzini (1981), among others, noted that one can determine $`\eta `$ in low-mass stars by comparing the mean mass of the red giants with that of HB stars in globular clusters. The mean mass of red giants can be relatively well-derived from the MSTO isochrone fitting, while that of HB stars can also be determined through pulsation analysis or synthetic HB construction, albeit with a somewhat lower precision. Renzini (1981) found $`\eta `$ of 0.3 based on the information available then, while the more recent work of Yi et al. (1997; 1999) found a factor of two larger efficiency favoured. It is, however, very difficult to compare one value to another because it depends not only on the stellar evolutionary tracks that were used to compute the mass loss but also on the ages assumed for the globular clusters in question. Thus, the actual values of the efficiency parameter or of the mass loss derived from different studies may be slightly different from one study to another. However, they must be able to reproduce the observed HB morphology using the mass loss efficiency they have chosen. Yi et al. (1999)’s choice of $`\eta `$ focused on the data of Galactic globular clusters of typical metallicity, i.e., \[Fe/H\]=$``$1.3. However, Yi et al. (1997) also remarked about a possible positive correlation between the mass loss efficiency and metallicity, which is consistent with the theoretical suggestion of Willson (2000). It seems that an accurate computation of mass loss as a function of stellar mass (time) and of metallicity is still a difficult task.

The mass loss efficiency $`\eta `$ is appears to be uncertain at least by a factor of two to three — approximately in the range of 0.3 through 1.0. However, this uncertainty is mostly due to its ill-understood sensitively to metallicity. For a given metallicity, the synthetic color-magnitude diagram (CMD) fitting technique suggests approximately 20% uncertainty in $`\eta `$. Therefore, we investigate the outcome by the use of three values of mass loss efficiency: 0.55, 0.65 (standard), and 0.75. Figure 10 shows the result.

When a larger value of $`\eta `$ is used, stars lose more mass on the RGB and become lower-mass, hotter, HB stars. This results in a higher UV flux. Old Galactic globular clusters in general exhibit UV spectra as seen in the model with $`\eta =0.65`$ (curve in the middle in the UV). Most clusters are bracketed by the other two models in terms of UV strength (see Yi et al. 1997). This effect becomes noticeable only after the population is old enough to develop a blue HB. We illustrate this in Figure 10 by showing models at two ages. Figure 11 shows this in color evolution. The non-monotonicity in B Vat ages 9 – 15 Gyr is due to the gradual development of a bluer HB with increasing age. The blueward turn-around at age 10 Gyr is due to the first appearance of the blue HB. The redward turn a few Gyr later is due to two effects. First, at such large ages, low-mass stars evolve very slowly and thus a smaller number of stars leave the hydrogen-burning stage to enter the HB phase. Second, some of red giants, which are already quite low in mass, lose too much mass during this long evolution on the RGB and consequently lack enough mass in the envelope to ignite the helium core flash. These stars may skip the HB phase and become faint planetary nebulae.

The color evolution beyond 13 – 14 Gyr is, however, quite uncertain because there are complex interplays between stellar evolutionary pace, the growth of core, mass loss, and the helium core flash. It should also be noted that similar effects from the HB morphology is believed to be important in spectral line index evolution as well (Lee, Yoon, & Lee 2000).

#### 2.2.3 Mass Loss Dispersion

The dispersion in mass loss, evident from the color spread on the HB, has a similar, albeit smaller, effect, as Yi et al. (1997) demonstrated. The over-simplistic clump-star assumption for all post-giant phases is still routinely employed, inevitably resulting in inaccurate models. This dispersion, often denoted by $`\sigma _{\mathrm{HB}}`$(in $`M_{}`$), is probably caused by the dispersion in mass loss on the RGB. It can be estimated by comparing synthetic HBs to observed ones. Various studies have adopted the single Gaussian mass function to construct synthetic HBs, and the value of the Gaussian mass dispersion has been reported to be around 0.02 $`M_{}`$with some uncertainty (Lee, Dmarque, & Zinn 1994; Catelan 2000). Except for some clusters that show a strong multi-modal color distribution on the HB (e.g., M 15), no Galactic globular cluster shows a mass dispersion considerably larger than twice of this value. Thus, we chose three values of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{HB}}`$, 0.001, 0.02, and 0.04, representing a single-peaked clump, normal, and wide mass dispersion assumptions.

Figures 12 – 13 show the results. The effects are qualitatively similar to those of $`\eta `$, although somewhat smaller. They appear only at large ages, where a population develops an HB that is sufficiently blue.

### 2.3 Uncertainties in the Stellar Spectral Libraries

Another significant source of uncertainty is the quality of the spectral libraries that are used to map theoretical stars into the observational domain. For transforming theoretical quantities to colors, color transformation tables are more popular than spectral libraries. Among the most popular color transformation tables are that of Green, Demarque, & King (1987) and that of Kurucz (1979; 1992). The Green et al. table is a semi-empirical one in the sense that they modified the old Kurucz table (1979) using empirical stellar data. As a result, the Revised Yale Isochrones based on the Green et al. table matched the observed CMDs of star clusters reasonably well. More than a decade later, Kurucz made a major update on his stellar spectral library and a corresponding color transformation table (Kurucz 1992). This new, purely theoretical library is still reported to seriously mismatch the cool-star data (e.g., Morossi et al. 1993), however. An effort to construct a semi-empirical spectral library based on the latest Kurucz library was made by Lejeune and collaborators (Lejeune, Cuisinier, & Buser 1997; 1998). Yi et al. (2001) find that this Lejeune et al.-calibrated Kurucz library (hereafter, the LCBK library) is qualitatively as good as that of Green et al. in reproducing observed CMDs. The LCBK library appears to be better calibrated in high metallicities and on the RGB, while the Green et al. table performs better for low metallicities and on the MS. Consequently, Yi et al. (2001) have released their newly computed isochrones using both color transformation schemes.

If we grant that we cannot yet clearly prefer one of these libraries, we are immediately trapped by the fact that they yield substantially different color evolution models. Figures 14 and 15 show the difference in color for an approximately solar metallicity stars but for two different evolutionary stages; MS stars and red giants. Compared to the libraries are empirical stellar data (plus symbols), kindly provided by Worthey (priv. comm.). Figure 14 shows that the LCBK table is correcting the dwarf data of the Kurucz table substantially in the low-temperature regions. As a result, the corrected table is very close to that of Green et al. (GDK). In $`U`$$``$$`B`$ and $`B`$$``$$`V`$, the GDK colors seem to match the empirical data better. The difference between the LCBK table and the GDK table seems small but large enough to stand out in the MS isochrone fitting. However, it is the comparison of low-gravity stars (e.g. red giants) that is striking. Figure 15 shows that the difference between different color calibrations is very large in certain temperature ranges. Similar differences exist in other metallicities. It should be noted that the empirical calibration is still quite poor, espeicially at super-solar metallicities because stellar sample are scarce; and for this reason, modeling super-metal-rich systems (e.g. giant elliptical galaxies) is not trivial. Figures 15 may give readers an impression that the LCBK colors match the empirical data very well. However, the truth is that the empirical temperature-color relations (shown as plus symbols) suffer from large ($`1`$ mag in $`U`$$``$$`B`$) uncertainties, as shown evidently in Figure 4 of Lejeune et al. (1997). Obviously, such differences will appear in the synthetic spectra and colors as uncertainties.

Figure 16 shows a comparison of the synthetic model spectra based on two different spectral libraries; the Kurucz library and the LCBK library. The Green et al. calibration was made only on colors, but not on the spectral library, and thus it is not available for spectral synthesis. But, the difference between the LCBK library and the Kurucz library is large enough to represent the current level of uncertainty in the spectral library. The model based on the LCBK library is in general redder for a given age. This appears systematically in B Vand $`VI`$, as shown in Figure 17.

## 3 Uncertainty in Synthetic Colors

The uncertainties in synthetic colors caused by the uncertainties in various input physical assumptions are shown in Figure 18 without legends. Basically, the mixing length parameter, the IMF slope and the spectral library make moderately important contributions to the uncertainty over all ages. On the other hand, convective core overshoot is important only at small ages (less than approximately 2 Gyr), while the mass loss efficiency and the mass dispersion are important only at large ages. If total metallicity is kept the same, $`\alpha `$-enhancement plays little role. This is summarised in Table 1.

The total uncertainty (standard deviation) is shown in Figure 19 as inner (smaller) error bars. In the worst scenario, if all sources of uncertainties behave in the same direction, the maximum uncertainty in colors as a function of age would appear as the outer (larger) error bars. Such a pessimistic outcome is very unlikely, however. The errors in the $`m(1500)V`$color at ages smaller than 10 Gyr are underestimated. This is because we are not exploring the impact of the post asymptotic giant branch (PAGB) stellar mass – the prime factor that determines the UV colors at small ages – as a source of uncertainty, which is poorly understood. At large ages, HB stars are likely to dominate the UV flux. Thus the uncertainty regarding the PAGB mass is probably negligible.

It is clear that U Bis not a good age indicator at all at least for this metallicity, as it behaves non-monotonically with respect to age. The non-monotonicity disappears in metal-rich models, but we feel that U Bis still poorly calibrated relative to other optical colors. Both B Vand $`VI`$seem reasonable as age indicators, but only at small ages. Once the population is older than approximately 7 – 8 Gyr, the spectral evolution in the visible bands is minimal. Besides, at somewhat larger ages, populations gradually develop a larger number of blue HB stars that counteract the redward evolution of the MSTO, causing non-monotonicity. Thus, we suggest that B Vand $`VI`$should not be used to derive the ages of systems older than 7 – 8 Gyr. At larger ages than that, $`m(1500)V`$becomes our choice.

The estimated errors of age estimates (one sigma) in the range of ages 2 – 7 Gyr, as shown in Figure 19, are typically 0.01 – 0.02 mag both in B Vand $`VI`$. For ages 1 – 2 Gyr, the uncertainty is dominated by the uncertainty in the overshoot parameter and can be as large as 0.1 mag. In this sense, the best results of age determination can be achieved when synthetic models are applied to 2 – 7 Gyr old populations.

## 4 Uncertainty in Age Estimates Derived using Synthetic Colors

The uncertainties in synthetic colors directly translate into uncertainties in age estimates. Figure 20 and Table 2 show the level of uncertainty in age estimates for two metallicities. In Figure 20-(a), we show only the metal-poor model, because the UV spectral evolution of metal-rich populations have not been calibrated sufficiently, in particular in terms of mass loss efficiency. This is because there are not enough old, metal-rich simple stellar populations that can be used to constrain mass loss efficiency at high metallicities. Even in B Vand $`VI`$, shown in Figure 20-(b) and (c), we do not have the same confidence in our old, metal-rich models as we do in metal-poor models for this reason.

The uncertainty is smallest at ages 2 – 5 Gyr. If a population has formed at a high redshift (say at 5), it would be this old at redshift 1 – 2. This demonstrates a clear advantage of studying redshift 1 – 2 objects. At $`z`$=1, rest-frame B Vwould be approximately $`IJ`$. Any color similar to this would work as a useful age indicator for old populations.

Most of the detectable distant populations are currently metal-rich. Synthetic colors are powerful probes of their ages, but only when they are in the age range of 2 – 5 Gyr. Thus, we call for caution in all studies that aim to derive the galaxy evolution history by means of population synthesis models. Rest-frame B Vis affected by the uncertainty in mass loss and modeling $`VI`$is seriously hampered by the uncertainties in the spectral library.

It is already very difficult to construct reliable, metal-rich simple stellar population models (single metallicity, coeval populations) in $`UBV`$ bands. To make the matters worse, galaxies are not simple stellar populations at all. Population analyses on galaxies therefore should be performed with much caution.

Despite our cautionary remarks, it is encouraging to find that the error bars in age estimates are so small. Our analysis suggests that the level of reliability of the current population synthesis models is likely to allow us to distinguish 13 Gyr-old populations from 8 Gyr-old ones and 8 Gyr-old one from 2 Gyr-old ones with at least 2 – 3 sigma confidence. Therefore, it is possible to use such broad band colors to determine the ages of simple stellar populations, such as globular clusters, in external galaxies. Precise measurements of the ages of globualr clusters in elliptical galaxies have been of particular interest, because they test elliptical galaxy formation scenarios, which is a key issue in modern cosmology.

Because the UV to optical color is a good age indicator for old populations, one can apply a two-color diagram, such as the one shown in Figure 21, to observed data in order to distinguish old populations from young ones. Once again, we include only metal-poor models in this plot because we are less confident about the UV spectral evolution of metal-rich populations. If observed data are clustered only along one narrow straight sequence as shown on the left of the shaded box in Figure 21, the data would imply that the populations are all substantially younger than Milky Way. On the other hand, outliers toward the right-hand side of this diagonal sequence, i.e., in the shaded box, would be considered older populations. Overplotted are Galactic globular cluster data. The UV-to-V colors and $`B`$-$`V`$ are from Dorman, O’Connell, & Rood (1995) and Harris (1996), respectively. All Galactic globular clusters are populating in the shaded box, which is consistent with their large ages. This and similar analyses may be useful to break the infamous age-metallicity degeneracy (Worthey 1994) and derive the ages of simple stellar populations, such as external star clusters.

## 5 Conclusions

Despite some skepticism, synthetic integrated colors appear to be reliable age indicators in select age ranges. Rest-frame optical colors are good age indicators at ages 2 – 7 Gyr, mainly due to the clear redward evolution of core hydrogen-burning stars. At larger ages optical colors fail to be reliable age indicators for two reasons. First, at large ages spectral evolution is very slow. Second, as MS stars become less massive with increasing age, a population develops hotter helium-burning stars, which causes non-monotonic evolution of optical colors. At sufficiently large ages, UV-to-optical colors may provide an alternative means of measuring ages. This can be applied to measure the ages of the globular clusters in nearby bright elliptical galaxies. Such studies may provide important tests against various galaxy formation scenarios.

We performed this investigation mainly on metal-poor populations, because we feel considerably less confident about input assumptions in modeling for metal-rich populations. The most serious problem in modeling metal-rich systems is the uncertainty in mass loss in low-mass, metal-rich stars. We believe that the most reliable way to constrain mass loss for such systems is to match their HBs with synthetic HB models. Thus, it is essential to collect accurate CMDs of metal-rich simple stellar populations.

The caveat of this analysis is that the estimated uncertainty in age derivation may not be realistic to populations of different metallicities and to composite populations. However, analyses similar to the one shown in Fig. 21 may be able to constrain the ages of simple stellar popuations regardless of their metallicities.

The impacts of the various uncertainties studied here have been investigated by means of the Yale stellar evolution code and the Yi’s population synthesis code. The magnitudes of such impacts could vary when different codes are used, for instance due to the use of different nemurical techniques, but probably only slightly. Thus, any disagreement between population models substantially larger than that demonstrated in this study would be difficult to justify.

## Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the referee, Guy Worthey, for constructive comments, stellar color data used in Figures 14 and 15, and for an insightful suggestion regarding Figure 21. I thank Thibault Lejeune, João Fernandes, Steve Zepf, and many others who encouraged me to start this investigation. Part of this work was performed while I was at California Institute of Technology. This work was supported by the Creative Research Initiative Program of the Korean Ministry of Science & Technology (grant).