ONT Excuses
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| We must regard classical mathematics
| as a combinatorial game played with the
| primitive symbols, and we must determine
| in a finitary combinatorial way to which
| combinations of primitive symbols the
| construction methods or "proofs" lead.
|
| JVN, TFFOM, page 62.
|
| Johann Von Neumann,
|"The Formalist Foundations of Mathematics",
| from a "Symposium on the Foundations of Mathematics",
| originally published in 'Erkenntnis' (1931), pp 91-121;
| translated from German by Erna Putnam & Gerald J. Massey,
| reprinted in Paul Benacerraf & Hilary Putnam (editors),
|'Philosophy of Mathematics, Selected Readings', 2nd ed.,
| Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1983.
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