> An example is why a general quintic cannot be solved with radicals A general quintic can be solved if you allow the "Bring radical", which is a function f(x)

> An example is why a general quintic cannot be solved with radicals A general quintic can be solved if you allow the "Bring radical", which is a function f(x) that gives the (unique) real root of x^5 + x + 1. When I first heard this, it sounded like a total cop-out, almost like saying "you can find the answer if you already know the answer". But what convinced me was the argument that the Bring radical is not more difficult to compute than the quintic root x^(1/5). So if you care about computability, then "solving" a quintic using roots + the Bring radical is equally as useful as solving it using roots alone.