Ep. 13 - On the Freedom of Thought and Nature: Freeman Dyson and Stephen Blackwood
The Ralston College Podcast
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The Non-Reductive Quality of Reality
Gertel's theorem shows conclusively that in pure mathematics, reductionism does not work. To decide whether a mathematical statement is true, it is not sufficient to reduce the statement to marks on paper. It comes out only by studying its meaning and its context in the larger world of mathematical ideas. In fact, I mean that we have the mathematics is an art as well as being a science. And we are free to create mathematics by setting the rules ourselves and seeing how they work out.
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