A Formalist's Perspective of Mathematics

Stefan Kahrs
University of Kent at Canterbury
Computing Laboratory
April 30, 1999

Abstract
According to some mathematicians, the formalist philosophy of math-
ematics faces the dilemma that a practising mathematician could not
possibly hold a formalist conviction, although some of the weaknesses
of mathematical foundations almost enforce a formalist position. I am a
formalist, and in this paper I explain how this dilemma fails to materialise.

1 Introduction
Works about the philosophy of mathematics like to address the question \What
is mathematics?" [Her97, CR48]. I am not going to answer that question. I am
a formalist, and from my position it is the wrong question to ask and I shall
explain later why this is so.
Let me rst fail to introduce myself. I am not a mathematician. I am not a
philosopher. So who am I and what am I doing writing a paper on the philosophy
of mathematics? I am a theoretical computer scientist; TCS is in all but name
a subdiscipline of mathematics. In many ways it is closer to the foundations of
mathematics than what we would call pure mathematics, largely because of the
special role formal notation plays in computing. While most mathematicians
can happily claim that foundational issues do not interfere with their everyday
activities, they do occasionally interfere with mine. This explains my interest
in this area.
You may wonder: what new can I tell you that justies writing such a paper?
You may also wonder what kind of egocentric megalomaniac I must be, using
the rst person singular so often in these opening lines. The answer to both
questions are related: my view on mathematics has strong subjective elements
as you will see, so much so that it would be misleading (and undermining my
own ideas!) to formulate my position more objectively.
I wrote this paper because I rarely felt adequately represented by mathe-
matical philosophy, either not represented at all or misunderstood. Therefore I
wanted to present my ideas as a coherent whole. Do not get me wrong. I am
not trying to convert you to my position on mathematics as the correct one. In

1
a subtle way, such an attempt would at least undermine if not contradict my
position. All I am trying to achieve is to gain respect for and understanding of
the variant of Formalism I practice. Too often I get reactions of disbelief.

2 My Belief
I will rst explain to you my own beliefs. If you do not want to know | skip
this section, the remainder of the paper is self-contained. The main reason I
bother to explain my beliefs is that it is easier to understand my position on
the discipline of mathematics once you have seen to which beliefs it is related.
This section is also meant to encourage you to re ect on your own beliefs.
I declare myself to be a formalist of some kind1 . In my mind, some parts
of mathematics have a unique meaning while I see others solely or partially
as artefacts of human imagination. This is a viewpoint I am certain to share
with the vast majority of mathematicians today. The dierence is where we
draw the line between certainty and ction. Over the years my position has
shifted towards becoming ever more skeptical on the certainties of mathematics,
including what I am personally certain about.
The skepticism started as a teenager when the denition of real numbers
came as a disappointing anticlimax, following the denitions of the natural
numbers up to the denition of the rationals. The reals just lacked elegance
and simplicity. In hindsight, I would describe the fundamental problem with the
reals as follows: the purpose of dening the real numbers is to get completeness.
What we are after is semantic completeness, what we get (in any particular
foundation of mathematics) is syntactic completeness. On the meta-level we
can always observe some kind of incompleteness.
This was the rst (small) crack in the armour and many others have followed
since, e.g. the arbitrariness of axiomatic set theory, Godel's incompleteness the-
orem, non-Euclidean geometry, the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem [Sko34] with its
resulting diculties of getting a grip on standard models for the reals [Rob66]
or even Peano arithmetic [RN52], Chaitin's Halting Probability [Cha98], etc.
Sometimes the cracks came, because the mathematics in question did not come
with the eternity smell we would expect from an eternal truth. Sometimes it
became clear that the formalism would necessarily leave a choice of interpre-
tations. Moreover, when I was asking myself \which of these interpretations
conrms with your mental model" then it became all too often clear that my
mental model would not resolve this either.
The continuum hypothesis? What do you think, brain?
Brain did not have an opinion on this matter.
I am certain about the meaning of natural numbers, and of semi-decidable
and co-semi-decidable predicates, generally of arithmetic sentences not involving
1 I distinguish Formalism from Hilbertism.

2
nested quantiers2. I am also ready to accept that Peano arithmetic is consistent
with this belief. That is it!
For instance, I believe in a unique meaning of the Goldbach conjecture re-
gardless of its provability, as it is expressible with a single universal quantier.
This belief would not stretch to the twin prime conjecture | two quantiers!
This is perhaps not quite a true-blue formalist position, because it does have
a semantical element, albeit a tiny one. Even that is not entirely unproblematic.
Stanislas Dehaene is right when he writes in [Deh97] from a neuroscientist's
point of view: \Even if mathematicians' introspection convinces them of the
tangible reality of the objects they study, this feeling cannot be more than an
illusion." However, Dehaene defends some form of mathematical semantics and
in particular intuitionism by referring to the evolutionary history of \number
sense"; if numbers are an artefact then this artefact predates human civilisation.
This is a valid point, but to me it feels like an uncomfortably weak basis for a
justication of mathematical beliefs.
Even less semantics would make it dicult though to talk about the prov-
ability or refutability of formulae as these notions would become themselves
(sic! ) ambiguous. On the other hand, if one does believe in a xed meaning
of provability then it also settles the formulae expressed with single quantiers.
Such a formula is true if provable, otherwise (assuming it is in prenex form) it
is false when it starts with 9 and true when it starts with 8.
Hofstadter explains [Hof79, page 458] how !-inconsistency would force us to
accept supernatural numbers, and claims (rightly) that this makes mathematical
logicians believe in incompleteness rather than !-inconsistency. If we accept
incompleteness then we have in principle a choice which truth values to assign
to undecidable formulae, but again we would be forced to accept supernaturals if,
for example, we accepted both the undecidability and falsehood of the Goldbach
conjecture.
I take the Popperian view [Pop59] that a law to be truly meaningful it must
be open to refutation attempts. If we could neither observe conrmation nor
refutation of a law then it is questionable whether it is meaningful in the rst
place. Natural languages permits us to utter gibberish and Godel's theorem
is indication that the same applies to formal logic. Chaitin strengthens the
argument by showing that there are mathematical formulae which are irreducible
in the sense of information theory [Cha98], which in essence means that they
are not true (or false) for a reason, they just are.
We could observe the falsehood of the Goldbach conjecture (by nding that
elusive counter-example), but no elementary observation would settle the twin
prime conjecture either way. Of course, the same would apply to the \triplet
prime proposition", i.e. that there are innitely many triplets (n; n + 2; n + 4)
of primes; we have a refutation rejecting that proposition3 , but I would not
regard this as an elementary observation, it is derived. I would argue that
2 I was tempted to express this as 0 [ 0 in the Kleene's hierarchy [Kle43]; however, this
1 1
hierarchy is semantical and thus fails to classify sentences.
3 One of the three numbers must be divisible by 3, as it is prime it must be 3 itself, thus
(3 5 7) is the only such triplet.
; ;

3
this refutation is an argument showing \if you believe that then you believe
anything" which is subtly dierent from \this is false". In particular, the non-
existence of a refutation of that kind does not establish truth: the undecidable
sentence 8m: 9n: p(m; n), with p being recursive, could be pointwise provable
(and thus pointwise true and thus true) or 9n:p(m; n) could itself be undecidable
for some n (and thus false, refuting the sentence as a whole).
This does not mean that I see all such formulae as meaningless, their proofs
and refutations give them structure and meaning. Therefore, I also make a dis-
tinction between (for example) classical and intuitionistic proofs. For instance,
a classical refutation of the twin prime conjecture that just said \there is some
anonymous number out there beyond which there ain't any more twin primes"
would carry less information than an intuitionistic refutation which also told us
that number. In this sense I think of the more complicated sentences not as
semantically two-valued, they admit more structure.
This is my position. I do not expect other people to share it, most will believe
in more, some perhaps in even less. Anyway, my position is one a theoretical
computer scientist can live with, and quite a few practicioners in computing
unwittingly share a similar kind of logical positivism. I realise that my position
is probably less comfortable for people working in analysis, or, dare I say it, set
theory.
However, my belief is only that, the belief of a single person. My intuitions
could be contradictory, incomplete, or just downright stupid. I have no intention
to imposing them as the true core of mathematics on other people. I should
emphasize that this is not a position taken out of political correctness. Rather,
I see the object of these beliefs as subjective as well; the beliefs I hold about
natural numbers are beliefs about my natural numbers, i.e. concepts relative to
my own mind.

3 The Formalist Game

Formalism is sometimes described as understanding mathematics as a meaning-
less game. Such descriptions are often intended to discredit the formalist ideas,
accusing formalists to lack faith. In my case, this criticism is fair, because I
do lack faith in things other mathematicians feel very strongly about. How-
ever, there is a dierence: formalism is not about what you believe is correct
mathematics, it is about what you believe is a correct mathematical proof.
Formal logic is written in a formal language. The purpose of a language
is communication. We want to express our ideas and communicate them to
other people. This communication, at its most formal, is ritualised | it is
symbol pushing, following a collection of agreed rules. In itself, the symbol
pushing is meaningless, or rather: too meaningful, the symbols permit dierent
interpretations. However, at the end of the communication line there are people
with mathematical convictions, possibly very dierent ones. What they agree
upon are the rules of the game. Each individual has his or her own interpretation
of the symbols in their own mind, an interpretation which should be consistent

4
with the rules. Therefore, a theorem does have a meaning for these individuals,
but not necessarily the same for everyone involved.
The individuals may have many reasons to agree on these rules. They may
have no choice as the rules are already out there and it has become very dicult
indeed to change them. Still, there were the original motivations for mathemati-
cians when they set them up:
 They need to establish some form of communication.
 They need a way to settle controversies.
 They readily accept these rules for themselves, they are \intuitive".
The reason people squabble about the rules is that these points are in con ict
with each other. Many of us would like to stick to ordinary human communica-
tion, but this has by now become insucient to settle disputes, not to mention
that the more complicated corners of mathematics are only accessible through
formal notation of some kind. The more powerful the rules become to settle
disputes the more people are alienated as they fail to relate to them. For ex-
ample, the battle about the axiom of choice goes on4 , despite the argument
being formally settled by Godel [God38] and Cohen [Coh63]. What people ar-
gue about are their mental models of sets | \choice" is a powerful tool, so
it scores on point two, but many people nd it (or some of its consequences)
counter-intuitive, so it fails on point three.
Not everyone nds \choice" counter-intuitive, in fact there seem to be math-
ematicians who believe in the truth of the axiom of choice, or even the continuum
hypothesis, etc. We have to draw the line somewhere. If the line is not clearly
drawn we have to nd a dierent way to settle controversies, and the principle
is: if you use contentious axioms then say so.
Notice that the formalist game leaves room for dierent beliefs, its purpose
is simply to regulate communications between mathematicians. This position is
very dierent from Balaguer's \plenitudinous platonism" which essentially says:
if it's consistent it's out there somewhere [Bal98, Fie98], a kind of mathematical
pantheism. I could not care less whether it is out there somewhere, I could
not nd out anyway. Even if your beliefs are inconsistent (which I normally
would not be able to nd out either), you may still produce proofs which are
perfectly acceptable to me or everyone else5 ; conversely, consistent beliefs do
not provide complete protection against making mistakes and are no excuse for
writing incomprehensible papers. I judge your deeds, not you.
Regulating communication is not the only purpose of formalism, and cer-
tainly not the predominant one. The predominant one is surely: cut out the
crap.
4 Paul Taylor's recent book on mathematical foundations [Tay99] has 33 references to it in
its index.
5 For example, Per Martin-Lof's rst formulation of type theory [ML71] was an inconsistent
logic. Still, most proofs people were likely to produce in that theory would happily travel to
consistent theories.

5
 Mathematicians often share more of their intuition than their use of formal
logic would suggest. In a way, formality ensures that you do not start talking
before you know what you are going to say. It is also an exclusive measure6
to prevent people from joining the discussion before they have mastered the
language of the discipline (and hence the discipline itself). In particular, Math-
ematics does attract crackpots and one way to keep them in check is to let them
prove their claims.

4 Informal Mathematics
Very little mathematical practice is completely formal. Proofs have gaps, ap-
peals to plausibility, claims of triviality, hidden assumptions, papers make vague
assumptions about \familiarity with the subject", some proofs are \left as an
exercise to the reader", etc. Even more importantly, proofs are not the only
thing mathematical practice consists of. We explore, we explain, we motivate.
We use our intuition, our experience, physical models, mathematical models,
etc. | we use whatever we feel is appropriate.
There are two issues here: rst, proofs which are rigorous but not completely
formal. Sucient rigour is a matter of judgement, style, and peer pressure. We
need to be convincing, but we also need to be brief if we want to be listened to
and we want to be brief to avoid getting bogged down in stupendous but unex-
citing details. Peer pressure decides with how large omissions we get away with
and even how large omissions are demanded from us. The peer pressure varies
signicantly, depending on the individuals involved, on the problem concerned,
and even on the subdiscipline in which all of this takes place. Each subdisci-
pline of mathematics7 creates its own little subculture with its own conventions
of what it calls sucient rigour. These conventions are in ux, they change
over time. The occurrence of antinomies (call them \published falsehoods" if
you like) push the discipline towards increase of rigour, their continuing absence
make it slowly drift away from it. The conventions can be very controversial |
as a referee I often fought battles for more rigour, and the editors and programme
committees did not always take my side. People get really (and understandably)
upset if you question something that is blatantly obvious in the belief system
of their mind; they think you are just stupid or trying to be a nuisance when
you pester them with the demand of backing up their claims with a bunch of
lemmas. They fail to accept that others may not share their beliefs.
The second issue is wider mathematical practice, e.g. teaching mathematics,
exploring it on the blackboard, chatting about it with a college over a cup of tea,
using physical devices as sources of inspiration, motivating denitions, explain-
ing why a theorem is interesting, etc. How does this list t into the formalist
6 Mathematicians have been aware for centuries that their language has the power to exclude
and intimidate. I may just remind the reader of Euler's infamous \proof" of the existence of
god.
7 At least within Theoretical Computer Science these conventions vary strongly with the
subdisciplines.

6
world? It does not! It is outside. However, it does t into the formalist's world,
i.e. the world of a human being. Formality is there to reliably underpin mathe-
matical communication between people, but the formalism is the medium, not
the message. If we communicate with people that share our belief system, we
can simplify the communication. This is what happens when we leave gaps in
proofs, or claim things to be trivial (sometimes: stupendously complicated, but
still morally trivial). We make an assumption that our communication partner
takes the same things for granted as we do and carry on with the (from our
point of view) important bit.
Leaving gaps is error-prone, of course, and our intuition can mislead us.
It happened to me once that I submitted a paper to a conference with an
unproven lemma (the curse of deadlines), only to discover a few weeks later
that the lemma was actually false. Of course, I withdrew the submission. A
revised version of the paper [Kah95] replaced the lemma with an open problem
in program semantics. Not only was my original intuition wrong concerning the
correctness of some lemma, I made a similarly severe misjudgement concerning
the complexity of the gap in my original proof sketch | it took a few years until
Loader and Schmidt-Schau solved the mentioned related open problem [SS99],
and their proofs were not particularly simple.
Every practicing mathematician knows that incidents like that are quite
common, although they are poorly re ected in the literature; partly, because
they are embarrassing for some of the individuals involved, partly, because they
undermine the belief in the certainty of mathematics, mostly though, because
mathematicians have been trained only to publish theorems. A rare but promi-
nent exception was the BBC documentation on Andrew Wiles' proof of FLT,
also reported in [Sin97]. Wiles' rst written version of the proof (after he went
public) was awed, and it took a tremendous eort to bridge the resulting gap in
the proof in a dierent way. The aw was in the informal part of the proof, and
apparently it was only discovered because the referee of the oending section
(Nick Katz) kept enquiring about an argument he did not understand.
Being error-prone is an objective problem with informal mathematics, but
there is also a subjective one. Most of us should have experienced a situation
in which a seminar or conference audience, a referee or editor, perhaps even a
co-author to one of our own papers, did not go with our intuition. We were
determined to leave out a particular point, because it is so unimportant and so
obvious anyway. But then there is this annoying little git there in the audience
who keeps nagging about it. I am certainly guilty of perpretations of that kind,
but I also have been on the receiving end. \The idiot still does not understand!"
we think, and we are half-right: yes, they do not understand, but we might be
the real culprit, assuming the presence of our mental model in all the listeners'
minds.

7
5 Formal proofs
There is a dierence between formal proofs and rigorous proofs. Both should go
far enough to eliminate (reasonable) doubt, but they have a dierent audience
and a dierent purpose.
A rigorous proof is written for people, to be read and understood by people.
A proof is rigorous if a competent but unimaginative mathematician could turn
it into a formal proof. For example, van Benthem Jutting8 did this twenty years
ago [Jut79] with the proofs in Landau's Grundlagen der Analysis. That this was
possible qualies Landau's proofs as rigorous.
Being written for people put constraints about the context and presentation
of a proof. People want to be motivated, kept interested and awake, they want to
know in which direction the proof is going. These needs should not compromise
the proof but they may very well aect its presentation. Besides the explanatory
text, we have often choices how we structure a proof. We want to avoid a
mountain of lemmas, we also want to avoid proofs that are longer than a single
page.
Formal proofs are dierent animals. There are situations in which a formal
proof does take the role of a rigorous one and that is when either (i) the theorem
in question is so controversial that only a completely formal proof will settle the
argument, or (ii) when the assumptions, logics, theories which allow to deduce
the theorem are the main subject of interest. The latter is important when we
try to nd a foundation which uses as few assumptions and principles as possible
and still allows us to derive the theorems \we need"; in other words, we may
use formal proofs as a tool for metamathematics. The former would be used
for \important" theorems or ones where we need machine assistance to cope
with a large number of cases9. For example, proving general properties of all
programs of a programming language is very tedious and error-prone. Some of
the properties claimed and proved for SML in [MT91] turned out to be wrong
[Kah93]. The original proofs were not informal, but they were not rigorous
enough to discover the problematic cases. Proving properties of that kind is
only realistic and credible under machine assistance.
What machine-checked proofs can oer are two things.
 One advantage is the check against silly mistakes, mistakes a careful hu-
man reader might discover but can easily miss. Here is an anecdote from
my past: more than ten years ago I was reading an article by two com-
puter scientists (which I leave unnamed here) who had formally developed
a rather sophisticated sorting algorithm. This development was formal,
but by hand. The outcome was a program in an imaginatory functional
programming language. I found it rather interesting, so I translated the
program into a real functional programming language, and tried it out. As
8 I am not saying he is unimaginative. But he did not need to be imaginative for this task.
9 I do not mean machine-assisted proofs where the program says: \It's true. I tried all the
cases." as it apparently did in the famous proof of the four-colour theorem. The machine has
to give us the opportunity to check the proof independently, just as we would do with a proof
by a human, i.e. the computer would generate (parts of) the proof.

8
 expected, it worked. Or did it? After trying a few examples I ran across
inputs which were only \almost" correctly sorted. Exhaustive search then
revealed that the program worked perfectly for lists up to length 7 and
then only occasionally failed. It sorted [7; 6; 5; 4; 3; 2; 1] correctly, but sort-
ing [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7] resulted in [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 7; 6]. More strangely, it worked
perfectly for lengths 8 to 10, in fact only if the length of the list had some
strange number-theoretic property (relating to Fibonacci numbers) could
the error occur. Investigation of the program development revealed the
trouble-maker: at some point the authors had replaced a < by a  and
then put the compensating10 \+1" on the wrong side of the comparison.
Fixing this error resulted in a slightly dierent program that worked per-
fectly. When I told the authors about it, their immediate reaction was \it
would not have happened with a computerised tool".
 The other oering is a rather mixed blessing, it is the revelation of your
hidden assumptions. You may have thought there were not any, but use
that tool and you will be amazed about the kind of things it comes up
with.
The semantics of the programming language Standard ML was supposed
to be formally presented in [MTH90]. However, the style of the formalisa-
tion was specically tailored for this problem and made a few notational
and semantical short-cuts. The attempt to computerise it [Van96] revealed
not only those, but also showed that certain recursive denitions needed
to be well-founded in order to be soundly used in the way they were. One
could say, the computerisation revealed much of the underlying structure
of [MTH90], structure that would not have been apparent to the casual
reader.
So, the rst audience of a formal proof is a machine, a computer. The point
of having a formal proof is that it can be automatically checked for correctness.
There is an issue here concerning how much trust we can have in this process
[DLP79]; the short reply to that concern is \quite a lot if we are careful", for
the long see Randy Pollack's answer in [Pol98]. The formality gives us added
condence in the validity of the proof. Of course, it is still up to us to interpret
the theorem, to give it meaning.
Most of the time, people who advocate formal proofs prove just the things
that have been proved before, informally or even rigorously. The complete
formality adds a little (or not quite so little) notch of extra certainty, uncovers
hidden assumptions and sometimes it suggests generalisations. Doing them on
machine also makes the proofs machine-accessible and machine-usable11. So the
machine is not just an obstacle, because it still does not like your proof, it also
assists you in nding or even constructing that proof.
10 It was a comparison on integers.
11 For example, the Polish Mizar project
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~piotr/Mizar/mirror/htdocs/
is a commendable long-term eort to build a library of automatically-checked proofs.

9
6 Criticisms and Accusations
Amongst the many criticisms Formalism has faced over the years some carry
particular weight. I address here three of those, hypocrisy, lack of history and
dogmatism.
Formalists are sometimes accused of hypocrisy, and this critique comes in all
shades somewhere between \I don't believe you that you believe that" on the
one extreme and \but what you wrote there is not formal, is it?" on the other.
The rst point is easily identied as a mixture of intolerance and lack of
imagination | our belief system is a source of comfort and sanity, and anybody
challenging it by suggesting an alternative has to face our scorn, our ridicule,
our pity, and | worst of all | our patronising insistence that they did not mean
what they said or wrote in the rst place 12 . This is quite similar to certain forms
of political or religious intolerance. A famous recent example is the reaction
the England football manager Glenn Hoddle received in early 1999 when he
expressed an opinion (concerning disabilities) that was based on the idea of
re-incarnation. His opinion could be viewed as oensive, but it was entirely
consistent with his expressed belief. The public reaction which ultimately led
to his dismissal, showed that people (including Britain's minister for sport, Tony
Banks) found it impossible to accept that Hoddle could hold such a belief. The
reader may think that bringing up religion in this context is completely out of
order, but if we go right back to the foundations of mathematics we are forced
to take a stand, and this stand is based on beliefs only. You may challenge that,
but this would only serve to uncover parts of your belief system as Platonist.
Do formalists practice Formalism? Do they arrive at their results in a for-
mal way, do they write completely formal books and papers? These questions
are related to the religious question Do atheists practice Atheism? The short
answer in both cases is that there is not really anything to practice, both philo-
sophical positions have a nihilist avour with no true cause to ght for. For
example, swearing on the bible is unproblematic for a (cynical) atheist | it
is (from the atheist's point of view) meaningless13, and therefore like swearing
on a copy of Grimm's fairy tales. So an atheist may very well conform to the
rituals of a religion if put under sucient social pressure to do so. Similarly, a
formalist may react to the mathematical community requiring informal presen-
tations and failing to value the eort that goes into producing formal proofs by
giving them what they want. In a way, Formalism has an unfair advantage over
other mathematical philosophies: hypocrisy is allowed!
A very typical criticism of Formalism was given by Lakatos in the introduc-
tion of [Lak76]:
Formalism disconnects the history of mathematics from the philos-
ophy of mathematics, since, according to the formalist concept of
mathematics, there is no history of mathematics proper.
12 A typical example from [Lak76, page 138] has the editors' claim: \This passage seems to
us mistaken and we have no doubt that Lakatos [...] would himself have changed it."
13 One could object to this idea (the non-existence of nihilist hypocrisy) on the grounds that
this lack of meaning may be absolute, but the meaning is still present as a social phenomenon.

10
An oddly worded accusation | if there is no proper history of mathematics how
we could we possibly disconnect from it? Perhaps this arguments indicates that
Lakatos views formalists as souls that have been lost forever.
I do not think that this criticism is fair. Or rather | it is a misunder-
standing. My previous arguments show how a formalist can see the connection
between history and philosophy of mathematics, even if this understanding of
mathematics gives philosophy a dierent role. This misunderstanding becomes
more obvious when Lakatos quotes and attacks Russell's remark that Boole's
Laws of Thought (1854) was `the rst book ever written on mathematics'.
What this is all about is the tension between mathematical practice and
mathematical heritage. Practicing mathematics happens today, it follows stan-
dards that have been set as consequences of historical achievements and his-
torical failures. When we apply today's standards to the mathematics of past
centuries then much of it will fail the test, including some of the historically
most important publications. This is what Russell's remark is all about. Writ-
ing today a 17th century style mathematical paper is unacceptable, and that
not only because so few mathematicians can read Latin these days. To give an
analogy, Georges Melies' Le voyage dans la lune was a historically important
and highly in uential lm, but it is not up to the standards of modern cinema.
If you made the same lm today you would make a bad movie. Mathematics is
not any dierent, it is not exempt from ageing. Of course, this also applies to
present days mathematics. Perhaps it is this thought that is so unbearable for
Platonists: if there is an ideal mathematics and what we are doing is not ideal,
then what on Earth are we doing?
We had mathematical insights before, proof ideas, proof by example, claims
about vaguely dened entities, long before formalism entered the scene. We still
have them and they still guide us, inspire us, convince us. But they are no longer
acceptable as proof substitutes. This is, ironically, a conclusion drawn from the
history (sic! ) of mathematics. Particularly, the arrival of non-Euclidean geome-
tries put the earlier informal \proofs" that the parallel postulate would follow
from the other axioms in a rather shady light. Some of these proofs (Saccheri's,
for example) were perfectly correct informal arguments, alas based on a par-
ticular interpretation of Euclid's primitives. This is one of the fundamental
problems with informal proofs, i.e. it is dicult to tell how strongly the pub-
lished conclusion depends on the authors own personal mathematical universe.
Lakatos also talks about the historical struggle between dogmatism and scep-
ticism in science, and claims that Formalism is the latest dogmatist philosophy
of mathematics. This is another misunderstanding. Formalism is most and
foremost a sceptical philosophy. It was born out of mistrust, lack of faith in the
capabilities of human beings. Its essence is the restriction to formal methods
of proof, not the inclusion of anything that was not there before already. It
is true: its early protagonists, especially Hilbert, were foremost dogmatists |
Hilbert's wir mussen wissen, wir werden wissen (we must know, we will know)
is dogmatist to the extreme. But even in the early days it was clear that For-
malism would put a constraint on any dogma you could derive from it: how can
you formalise mathematics if you do not have formalised mathematics already

11
at your disposal to do that? Hilbert's programme was an attempt to overcome
this fundamental constraint, an attempt that was bound to fail.
The impact of Godel's incompleteness theorem [God31] cannot be overes-
timated in this context. It not only made Hilbert's programme fail (that was
just a side issue), it showed that formal mathematics would necessarily render
a large proportion of its sentences ambiguous if not meaningless, and it also
boosted the case for constructivism [Qui70, page 87]. After Godel, formalist
dogmatism was severely undermined. It has been argued that Godel's theorem
unseated formalism, but it only shattered formalist Platonism: full formality
now not only embraces proofs and refutations, but also a large grey area, a
Platonist's anathema. In fact, Platonism in general took a major blow | Godel
showed that certain paradoxa were formalisable, but that does not mean that
informal mathematics is safe from them, naive set theory certainly was not.

7 Conclusion
To sum up my major ideas on the philosophy of mathematics:
 Mathematical truth is individualistic; true is what is true in our minds,
in our own mathematical universe. I do not oer you a universal truth,
and if you are unlucky, your own little universe is fake and riddled with
inconsistencies.
 Formalism is a tool for communication. Increase in rigour will decrease
the ambiguity of what we say and write, but a certain amount of ambi-
guity will always be left. A particular formalism (a particular logic plus a
paticular collection of axioms) is justied with respect to our own beliefs;
if it con icts with them | then we should go public and try to ght it o.
 Informal mathematics is a tool for mathematical exploration. Our intu-
ition, experience, and convictions will guide us to new results. However,
to establish a new result we will have to communicate it to other people,
people with possibly dierent intuitions, dierent experiences and dierent
convictions.
 An informal proof is unacceptable if it relies on that persons peculiar
convictions, or worse, if it is unclear if it does. A formal proof can be
unacceptable for the very same reason, i.e. it may employ a piece of logic or
mathematics which we nd questionable, e.g. excluded middle, the axiom
of choice, or whatever we are unhappy with. But at least it makes it
explicit.
I have a reason for emphasising the individualistic aspect of truth. My
own personal beliefs have often been at odds with the beliefs of others. This
surfaces in squabbles about the adequacy or correctness of certain proofs or the
motivation behind certain mathematical constructions. Some of these we can
resolve by increasing rigour, others we cannot. In any case we should be aware

12
that our beliefs may not be shared, especially those we cannot express in a way
that is open to scrutinity.
Although my idea overall may seem close to Hersh's \humanist mathemat-
ics", because we both stress the importance human beings play in mathematics
as a process, there are important dierences. Hersh sanctions mathematical
practice | \I'm defending our right to do mathematics as we do" is a very
telling quote from the preface of his book [Her97], and sanctioning existing
practice seems to be one of his main motivations. I feel no inclinations of such
sorts. However, I am reminding mathematicians that their convictions are their
own (and perhaps their very own) and that it is still possible and worthwhile to
communicate mathematics with people of dierent beliefs.

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