A Problem With Math
So you hate math? No problem! It might not matter anyway! Put aside your festivities for a moment as I explain. I was in my dauntingly titled "Pure Mathematics" class last week when we were learning about the very basics of math (no, it is not simple). We came across this time when someone only 40 years ago used these things called the ZF Axioms to prove that something else cannot be proven for or against, as long as the ZF Axioms hold true. So obviously you would just assume that they are true, but we asked and the prof said that no one knows. So then, as I like to bust out the obvious question, I ask "So does that mean that potentially all of mathematics is based on something that may not even be true?" and he simply states "You're right." This is about the time that I get up and walk out of class punching the walls wondering why I became a math major, but actually no that didn't happen. But you'd think that someone would come along and double check the fundamentals of mathematics somewhere in the past thousands of years. But I guess not. Either that or someone found that it actually just doesn't work and when he tried to tell some other people that have dedicated their life to the study of math, he was tortured to death. No one wants to hear that what they live by is all just made up junk. But still, math might not be real? OK great. Have another drink. But it's true apparently. Another friend, while I was visiting him in Kingston on the weekend was telling me about the Incompleteness Theorem that says basically that three different people proved in three different ways that arithmetic is incomplete. Again, after the thousands of years that math has been around, you'd think that someone would also come along and double check the completeness of arithmetic. But it could've just been torture again ending in death. I guess we'll never know, unless you are the one doing the torturing. But if you are, you are sick.
Joel Anderson, Octobed 26, 2004
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