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73 votes
9 answers
29k views

What are some important but still unsolved problems in mathematical logic?

In the past, first-order logic and its completeness and whether arithmetic is complete was a major unsolved issues in logic . All of these problems were solved by Godel. Later on, independence of ...
32 votes
5 answers
3k views

What is the status of the Hilbert 6th problem?

As you know, the Hilbert sixth problem was to axiomatize physics. According to the Wikipedia article, there is some partial succes in this field. For example, Classical mechanics, I believe, can be ...
Sergei Akbarov's user avatar
26 votes
9 answers
8k views

Why are proofs so valuable, although we do not know that our axiom system is consistent? [closed]

As a person who has been spending significant time to learn mathematics, I have to admit that I sometimes find the fact uncovered by Godel very upsetting: we never can know that our axiom system is ...
19 votes
14 answers
4k views

Excellent uses of induction and recursion

Can you make an example of a great proof by induction or construction by recursion? Given that you already have your own idea of what "great" means, here it can also be taken to mean that the chosen ...
9 votes
2 answers
473 views

Completing half of Hilbert's program: Foundations that are conservative over Peano Arithmetic

The goal of the Hilbert program was to find a complete and consistent formalization of mathematics. Gödel's first incompleteness theorem establishes that completeness is impossible with first-order ...
Christopher King's user avatar
6 votes
5 answers
684 views

Stronger theorem not resulting from proof analysis

Suppose that we proved $\varphi$ from a theory $T$. Often we ask whether or not we could have proved $\varphi$ with a weaker theory, to find out we usually analyze the proof and try to figure out ...