FOM: What is mathematics? was intuition and rigor was arbitrary objects

[Vladimir Sazonov]

Ayan Mahalanobis wrote:
> 
> In the current ongoing debate, which started from considering "arbitrary
> objects" and now stands as a debate of intuition and rigor. I have a
> more basic and elementary question; What is mathematics? or rather What
> should be Mathematics?

This was a topic of FOM several times. Say, there was a suggestion 
by Prof. Mycielski who identified Math. with ZFC. I also suggested 
some definition, roughly speaking, saying that Math. is a science 
on formal systems. Try to look through FOM archives. 

-- 
Vladimir Sazonov                        V.Sazonov at csc.liv.ac.uk 
Department of Computer Science          tel: (+44) 0151 794-6792
University of Liverpool                 fax: (+44) 0151 794 3715
Liverpool L69 7ZF, U.K.       http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~sazonov