From David Smith, University College London
London
John Casti, writing about Hao Wang’s book A Logical Journey, states:
“By now, almost everyone is familiar with Gödel’s work on incompleteness in
mathematics, as well as the possible implications of this work in areas such as
artificial intelligence” (Review, 5 July, p 46).
What an extraordinary claim! Are you familiar with it? Can you imagine going
out on the streets with a clipboard, stopping passers-by at random and asking
them whether they are familiar with Gödel’s work on incompleteness in
mathematics? I predict that in 99.999 per cent of cases the answer would be “You
what?”
