Again, the goal is not to convince, but to understand. Thus the ubiquitous "proof is left as an exercise for the reader". To extent that mathematics is a scien

Again, the goal is not to convince, but to understand. Thus the ubiquitous "proof is left as an exercise for the reader". To extent that mathematics is a science, the whole point is to understand. Of course, people time and again have succumbed to the feeling that (e.g.) numbers are divine, but there's nothing mathematical about that. --- It's not like it has been established as a mathematical theorem based on simpler ontological facts that capital-T truth exists. And everything in our daily experience points out to the contrary. That fact that computers and programming languages have evolved from XOR and NAND semiconductors says a lot about the power of a particular branch of mathematics; it says nothing about the nature of mathematics. That idea is like claiming that the existence of probability theory implies that mathematics is about reasoning with uncertainties.