Hilberts list of problems is way less clear-cut than you think. His first and second problems eventually ended up being “solved” only once people figured out wh

Hilberts list of problems is way less clear-cut than you think. His first and second problems eventually ended up being “solved” only once people figured out what Kurt Gödel was going on about with his incompleteness theorems. But to many people at the time, this was not really a “solution”. There are other problems on the list like “formulate physics mathematically” and “further develop calculus”. So Hilbert’s list contains both specific and hopelessly vague problems.