This Title is False: Hilbert, Gödel, Turing and the Beautiful Futility of Mathematics
The next Math Club event will be a talk by graduate student J.D. Nir on Thursday, November 14 from 4 - 5 pm in 351 Avery Hall. J.D.'s talk is titled "This Title is False: Hilbert, Gödel, Turing and the Beautiful Futility of Mathematics":
In a well known XKCD comic, scientific fields are arranged by purity with mathematics all the way at the end labeled "more pure." We love math because it is rigorous and clear cut; there's a right answer and we know how to find it. We deal with truth and certainty, right?
In this talk, we examine the foundation of these claims. Does math rest on a solid bedrock of truth, or is it turtles all the way down? What does it mean to be "true" anyway? We will investigate the very heart of mathematics and find it is not the well-oiled machine we pretend it is.
After pulling back the curtain and seeing math for what it really is, will you still find it beautiful?