Concept
Hilbert's program
Overview
In mathematics, Hilbert's program, formulated by German mathematician David Hilbert in the early 1920s, was a proposed solution to the foundational crisis of mathematics, when early attempts to clarify the foundations of mathematics were found to suffer from paradoxes and inconsistencies. As a solution, Hilbert proposed to ground all existing theories to a finite, complete set of axioms, and provide a proof that these axioms were consistent. Hilbert proposed that the consistency of more complicated systems, such as real analysis, could be proven in terms of simpler systems. Ultimately, the consistency of all of mathematics could be reduced to basic arithmetic.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems, published in 1931, showed that Hilbert's program was unattainable for key areas of mathematics. In his first theorem, Gödel showed that any consistent system with a computable set of axioms which is capable of expressing arithmetic can never be complete: it is possible to construct a statement that can be shown to be true, but that cannot be derived from the formal rules of the system. In his second theorem, he showed that such a system could not prove its own consistency, so it certainly cannot be used to prove the consistency of anything stronger with certainty. This refuted Hilbert's assumption that a finitistic system could be used to prove the consistency of itself, and therefore could not prove everything else.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Any such select set is called the set of postulates, or premises, from which the reasoning proceeds. The reasoning is nothing else than the exhibition of the whole pattern of general conditions involved in the pattern derived from the selected postulates.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Hilbert's program is.
The relations between these things then receive "genaue und vollstaendige Beschreibung" through the axioms of the geometry. And the fact that these "things" are called points, lines, and planes is not to give to them any of the connotations ordinarily associated with these words further than are determined by the axiom groups that follow. Indeed, other geometers are even more explicit on this point.
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Hilbert's program is.
In modern expositions of the axioms of geometry certain conditions are laid down which the relation of congruence between segments is to satisfy. It is supposed that we have a complete theory of points, straight lines, planes, and the order of points on planes--in fact, a complete theory of non-metrical geometry. We then enquire about congruence and lay down the set of conditions--or axioms as they are called--which…
Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
States what Hilbert's program is.
Philosophers who discussed Hilbert's program
Related ideas
- Formal language
- First-order logic
- Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory
- Kurt Gödel
- Foundations of mathematics
- Proof theory
- Mathematics
- Mathematical logic
- Peano axioms
- Arithmetic
- Completeness (logic)
- Uncountable set
- Second-order arithmetic
- Gödel's incompleteness theorems
- Alfred Tarski
- David Hilbert
- Decidability (logic)
- Axiom
- Euclidean geometry
- Entscheidungsproblem
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.