History
The Entscheidungsproblem, German for "Decision-problem", is attributed to David Hilbert: "At 1928 conference Hilbert made his questions quite precise. First, was mathematics complete... Second, was mathematics consistent... And thirdly, was mathematics decidable? By this he meant, did there exist a definite method which could, in principle be applied to any assertion, and which was guaranteed to produce a correct decision on whether that assertion was true" (Hodges, p. 91). Hilbert believed that "in mathematics there is no ignorabimus' (Hodges, p. 91ff) meaning 'there is no limit to what can be known'. See David Hilbert and Halting Problem for more.
Read more about this topic: Decision Problem
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)