Informal versus formal mathematics

Philosophy of mathematics (00A30) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05) First-order arithmetic and fragments (03F30) Complexity classes (hierarchies, relations among complexity classes, etc.) (68Q15)

Review text

In order to illustrate the differences between the formal and informal approaches to mathematics, the author presents two striking examples. First, he presents a short discussion of Kunen's algorithmic implementation [see \textit{K. Kunen}, ``A Ramsey theorem in Boyer-Moore logic, J. Autom. Reasoning 15, No.~2, 217--235 (1995; Zbl 0836.03031)], based on the Boyer-Moore theorem prover, of a proof of the Paris-Harrington theorem (see [\textit{J. Paris} and \textit{L. Harrington}, ``A mathematical incompleteness in Peano arithmetic, in: J. Barwise (ed.), Handbook of mathematical logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1133--1142 (1977; Zbl 0443.03001)]). Then, the author's proposal, with \textit{N. C. A. da Costa} [``Consequences of an exotic definition for \(\text{P}=\text{NP}\), Appl. Math. Comput. 145, No.~2--3, 655--665 (2003; Zbl 1046.68060); addendum ibid. 172, No.~2, 1364--1367 (2006)], of an `exotic' formalization of the \(\text{P}=\text{NP}\) hypothesis in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is presented and elaborated.

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(3)

This page was built for publication: Informal versus formal mathematics

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q885512)