ONT Re: Excuses, Exergues
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| It is a great honor and at the same time a necessity for me to round out and
| develop my thoughts on the foundations of mathematics, which I expounded here
| one day five years ago and which since then have constantly kept me most actively
| occupied. With this new way of providing a foundation for mathematics, which we may
| appropriately call a proof theory, I pursue a significant goal, for I should like to
| eliminate once and for all the questions regarding the foundations of mathematics, in
| the form in which they are now posed, by turning every mathematical proposition into
| a formula that can be concretely exhibited and strictly derived, thus recasting
| mathematical definitions and inferences in such a way that they are unshakable
| and yet provide an adequate picture of the whole science. I believe that I
| can attain this goal completely with my proof theory, even if a great deal
| of work must still be done before it is fully developed.
|
| DH, TFOM, page 464.
|
| David Hilbert,
|"The Foundations Of Mathematics",
| address delivered to the Hamburg Mathematical Seminar, July 1927,
| reprinted in Jean van Heijenoort (ed.), 'From Frege To Gödel,
| A Source Book in Mathematical Logic', 1879-1931',
| Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967.
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