FOM: old and new rigor?

[Harvey Friedman]

Upon reading Riis and Mayberry today, which came in as adjacent files, I
noticed the curious relationship between two of the points made there. Care
to comment?

Riis 6:24PM 9/13/98 writes:

>On Fom there have been quite a lot of discussions of the status of CH.
>In my oppinions these discussions have been somewhat irrelevant
>as there is indeed a proof of not-CH. I have tried this proof on many
>mathematicians (certainly at least 10) and I never found anyone
>who did not accept the proof.
>
>My proof is a variant of a related well known argument by Chris
>Freiling. Freilings argument was published in JSL 1986
>(See "Axioms of Symmetry: Throwing Darts at the Real Line",
>Journal of Symbolic Logic, 51, pages 190-200).

Mayberry 1:57PM 9/13/98 writes:

>It would be silly to say that Descartes,
>Newton, and Riemann were not doing mathematics. But it is nevertheless
>true that standards of rigour in proof and in definition have been
>enormously sharpened since they did their work. Clearly simply going
>back to their standards is not a serious option.