Re: My talk about Godel to the post-grads.

"Nam D. Nguyen" <namducnguyen@xxxxxxx> writes:

Haskell B. Curry, in "Foundations of Mathematical Logic", stated of an
incomplete formal system as "any formal system which is consistent and
sufficiently strong to be useful for mathematical purposes". He did
use the phrase "to put it roughly" before the sentence and I'm not
saying Curry misunderstood GIT. But the phrase "to be useful for
mathematical purposes" seems rather odd to me, somewhat suggesting
the possibility some authors and professors might not fully understand
the nature of GIT.

There's no doubt in my mind that some authors and professors do not
fully understand the nature of the incompleteness theorems, but I
don't see any hint that Curry doesn't understand it. The rough phrase
"to be useful for mathematical purposes" is simply meant to avoid
going into details about representing primitive recursive functions
(or PA or what have you) and getting the very broad notion across to
the reader.

--
"So why are mathematicians NOT what most people suppose? Why are they
not these brilliant and wonderful people who act in favor of humanity
instead of against it?" -- James S. Harris, on public confusion about
mathematicians and superheroes.
.