On explicating the concept `the power of an arithmetical theory' (Q2481252): Difference between revisions

The author defends the Antithesis that it is not possible to turn the vague concept ``the power of an arithmetical theory'' into a precise and fruitful mathematical concept; i.e., there is no explication of the concept. His point of entry comes from information-theoretic ideas of G. J. Chaitin on why one cannot derive a ``twenty-kilo'' theorem if one has only ``ten-kilo'' of axioms and rules of inference. The author's analyses and critiques of Chaitin's results are particularly useful; e.g., Chaitin's results on (1) Randomness and (2) the Halting Probability of a specific Universal Turing Machine. For some reason, there is no discussion of the power of non-arithmetical theories. Hopefully, the author does not believe that everything is reducible to arithmetic. That sounds too much like a logico-mathematical ``theory of everything''. Although there may be no explication of the notion of the power of an arithmetical theory, this will not deter people from estimating the logical strength of their formal tools, while searching to settle, e.g., the Riemann Hypothesis or some unsettled Diophantine conjectures of Fermat, Euler, Gauss, Eisenstein, Turing, or others. Indeed, the author's view of theories from the ``outside'' (instead of from the ``inside'') may provide a useful measure for estimating logical strength (unless arithmetical theories ``reside'' on some kind of Klein Bottle, in which case there is neither an ``inside'' nor an ``outside'').