Wow, thanks Rich. And the follow-on conversation on the website is also
interesting.
I have to admit the Axiom of Choice has been puzzling to me, why its
importance, how it is applied and so on.
-- Owen
On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Rich Murray <rmfor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "no one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created",
> Hugh Woodin's "ultimate L": Richard Elwes: Rich Murray 2011.08.18
>
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128231.400-ultimate-logic-to-infinity-and-beyond.html?full=true
>
> Ultimate logic: To infinity and beyond
>
> 01 August 2011 by Richard Elwes
> Magazine issue 2823.
>
> The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above
> and beyond mathematics as we know it
>
> WHEN David Hilbert left the podium at the Sorbonne in Paris, France,
> on 8 August 1900, few of the assembled delegates seemed overly
> impressed. According to one contemporary report, the discussion
> following his address to the second International Congress of
> Mathematicians was "rather desultory". Passions seem to have been more
> inflamed by a subsequent debate on whether Esperanto should be adopted
> as mathematics' working language.
>
> Yet Hilbert's address set the mathematical agenda for the 20th
> century. It crystallised into a list of 23 crucial unanswered
> questions, including how to pack spheres to make best use of the
> available space, and whether the Riemann hypothesis, which concerns
> how the prime numbers are distributed, is true.
> <snip>
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