4 ms·

I'm wondering why the "at least a Hilbert" is thrown in there. His name doesn't appear anywhere else in the article, and the wording suggests that Hilbert is so

• jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  Hilbert wanted to establish mathematics on a firm foundation because a number of paradoxes suggested that the current foundations was faulty (Russell's paradox being one, there are others that I can't remember as well). Basically Hilbert wanted to find a list of axioms from which all of mathematics could be derived and then prove that these axioms were consistent, i.e., that you can't create two contradicting statements from them. But then Gödel showed with his incompleteness theorems that this wasn't possible. So I guess the author was suggesting that biology have a firm, axiomatic basis?
  • Retra 12y ago
    The reference to Grothendieck and Hilbert don't seem to be about establishing something like an 'axiomatic basis', but about having a leader who can organize a platform of modernization in the field. They both lead programs. That's about as far as the thinking goes on that one, I suspect.
• akulesa 12y ago
  good point - when I was initially writing this post (I'm the original author) I was planning to include a section discussing "the Hilbert questions" in mathematics. These questions not only guided the field, but just the conversation which preceded it was likely what catalyzed lots of the developments in 20th century math. I think biology is ripe for such a discussion. We just need to convince people that it's worth having!