Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 11:26:44 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: George Reid <george.reid@oriel.oxford.ac.uk> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, pgreen <polytarp@m-net.arbornet.org>, Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language in danger: Language loss Message-ID: <20020527112644.F71216@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <20020527094219.A53169@FreeBSD.org>; from george.reid@oriel.oxford.ac.uk on Mon, May 27, 2002 at 09:42:19AM %2B0100 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0205261919370.49175-100000@m-net.arbornet.org> <3CF17486.F06F3E6A@mindspring.com> <20020527005647.A50028@FreeBSD.org> <3CF1CD8C.C3262181@mindspring.com> <20020527094219.A53169@FreeBSD.org>
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George Reid said on May 27, 2002 at 09:42:19: > On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 11:09:16PM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > > > If you could provide a proof for Goedel's Theorem, it wouldn't > > be "Goedel's Theorem", it would be "Goedel's Law". > > I can provide you with proofs for any number of theorems, none of which > are generally referred to as "laws". However, I have more important > things to do than quibble over semantics. And if you *couldn't* prove Gödel's theorem, it would be Gödel's conjecture or Gödel's hypothesis. But in fact Gödel himself supplied a proof. That's what made it such a significant development. Some "theorems" like Fermat's Last Theorem shouldn't have been called theorems at all, until they were proved. Even today only a handful of people can claim to understand Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem. But just about every mathematician and computer scientist understands Gödel's theorem, its original proof, and the way it fits in with later developments such as algorithmic information theory. Some people would say that today Gödel's theorem is rather obvious. See for instance http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/georgia.html - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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