Re: "no one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created", Hugh Woodin's "ultimate L": Richard Elwes: Rich Murray 2011.08.18

Posted by Owen Densmore on Aug 18, 2011; 3:41pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/no-one-shall-expel-us-from-the-paradise-that-Cantor-has-created-Hugh-Woodin-s-ultimate-L-Richard-Elw8-tp6699752p6699879.html

Wow, thanks Rich.  And the follow-on conversation on the website is also interesting.

I have to admit the Axiom of Choice has been puzzling to me, why its importance, how it is applied and so on.

        -- Owen

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Rich Murray <[hidden email]> wrote:

 "no one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created",
Hugh Woodin's "ultimate L": Richard Elwes: Rich Murray 2011.08.18

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128231.400-ultimate-logic-to-infinity-and-beyond.html?full=true

Ultimate logic: To infinity and beyond

01 August 2011 by Richard Elwes
Magazine issue 2823.

The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above
and beyond mathematics as we know it

WHEN David Hilbert left the podium at the Sorbonne in Paris, France,
on 8 August 1900, few of the assembled delegates seemed overly
impressed. According to one contemporary report, the discussion
following his address to the second International Congress of
Mathematicians was "rather desultory". Passions seem to have been more
inflamed by a subsequent debate on whether Esperanto should be adopted
as mathematics' working language.

Yet Hilbert's address set the mathematical agenda for the 20th
century. It crystallised into a list of 23 crucial unanswered
questions, including how to pack spheres to make best use of the
available space, and whether the Riemann hypothesis, which concerns
how the prime numbers are distributed, is true.
<snip>

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