Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem by Singh Simon

Author:Singh, Simon [Singh, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Non-Fiction, History, Biography, Philosophy
ISBN: 9780385493628
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1997-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

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