Ask a Mathematician

[polymath257]

Is there a mathematical explanation for why a size 12EEE shoe from one shop fits me perfectly, but a size 12EEE from another shop treats my feet the way the Inquisition treated heretics?

Boru

Lack of standards. ALL shoes are supposed to be torture.

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Maybe you'll regret starting this thread, but, did David Hilbert really say, "The actual infinite cannot exist in Nature...", and, if so (presumably), was his quote taken out of context?

Close. he said it *isn't* found in nature. he specifically talked about elliptic geometry as a possibility (equivalent to a positive curvature for space). This now seems much less likely than it did in 1925.

https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers...sophy.html

But this was before Godel proved his results and essentially destroyed Hilbert's program (as described in that article).

Hilbert had a goal of proving that reasoning about the infinite could be proved consistent using finite reasoning. Godel showed in a very powerful way that this isn't possible (at least not in the way Hilbert desired).