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:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)