Hilbert's programme: on the change of mathematical practice before and after Gödel's incompleteness theorems. (Q2856944)

The paper shows as mistaken the common belief that Hilbert's program was a ``blind alley'' and that Gödel's incompleteness theorems destroyed all attempts to arrive at axiomatic completeness in Hilbert's sense. In fact, the author argues, Gödel's theorems show the impossibility of a descriptively complete axiomatisation using semantically complete logic. The response of mathematical logicians to this fact was not the abandonment of Hilbert's programme but rather its modification to a reduced form. According to the author, this was the direct cause of the shift of emphasis in modern mathematics from calculation and construction techniques to description of abstract structures and models. Another direction taken by mathematical logic is to use semantically incomplete logic, such as \textit{J. Hintikka}'s IF-logic [The principles of mathematics revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press (1996; Zbl 0869.03003)], to derive descriptively complete axiomatisations which are however not guaranteed to transfer truth in the traditional sense.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1330.01007].