# Why are the standards of mathematical proof still unsettled?

Please see the embold phrases below. I'm just a laywoman, and I'm just seeking simple answers. I last took math when I was 17.

1. I read Has the standard of mathematical proofs changed over time?, but how did the standards of mathematical proof change "in the millennia separating Euclid from Hilbert"? I don't understand how they can change, when logic is forevermore permanent and objective.

2. Why are "standards of mathematical proof" "still not quite settled"?

### RATIONALITY IN FLUX

Economic analyses have been based on Plato’s notion of a skillful weigher: To evaluate a plan, one first assigns utilities to every type of pain or pleasure that may result from the plan, at every point in time; then weights the utilities by probabilities to take account of uncertainty; and, finally, evaluates the plan in terms of such a weighted sum. My arguments indicate the need for a broader standard of rationality. Why should the tandard not change? Even standards of mathematical proof changed in the millennia separating Euclid from Hilbert, and they are still not quite settled. [Emphasis mine] I see no reason why Plato’s standard of rationality—or its modern economic versions, for that matter—should not also change in the face of increased knowledge of decision making, especially knowledge about choice construction and context-dependent social goals.

Paul Slovic, The Irrational Economist (2010), p 70.

• An example: calculus has been used since the 1600s, but rigorous definitions of some of its basic concepts (such as limits) were not formulated until the 1800s. The lack of careful definitions in certain areas of math led to confusion between distinct concepts that were not recognized as distinct (an example is pointwise and uniform continuity) and to proofs of results that are now regarded as false. Some subtle issues of mathematical logic (related to the axiom of choice) were only discovered in the late 1800s. – KCd Jun 6 at 5:06
• Have you thought about computer generated proofs? In 1976 Haken and Appel published their proof of the Four Color theorem and in the following decades things have become much more complicated, sophisticated and contentious. – sand1 Jun 6 at 9:49
• logic is forevermore permanent and objective --- Useful googling terms: temporal logic AND relevance logic AND modal logic AND intuitionistic logic AND paraconsistent logic AND provability logic AND (OK, enough said!) – Dave L Renfro Jun 6 at 15:54
• 1. Euclid made assertions that are (in modern eyes) not justified. If point $A$ is inside a circle, and point $B$ is outside, then there is a point of the line segment $\overline{AB}$ that is exactly on the circle. Hilbert formulated foundations for Euclidean geometry that include justification for such things. 2. I think you will have to ask Paul Slovic what he means. – Gerald Edgar Jun 6 at 16:15

First of all, Slovic is a psychologist, not a mathematician. Most likely, his knowledge of modern mathematics is quite limited. (Modern here means, roughly, developed in the last 100 years.) I would be very surprived if he were able to read any papers published, say, by Annals of Mathematics (which is widely regarded as the best math journal) in the last 80 years. Hence, he should not be regarded as an authority in math matters.

Standards of mathematical proof (at least in pure math) remained essentially the same for the last 100 years. (David Hilbert was probably the one most responsible for the current standards.) There are several important exceptions here:

1. Computer-aided proofs mentioned by sand1 in a comment. The first computer-aided proof I know, appeared in the solution of the 4-color problem (mid-1970s). Another, more recent, example is the solution (in mid-1990s) of Kepler's problem on optimal ball packing in the 3-dimensional Euclidean space. There is no commonly accepted protocol on when to regard such proofs as solid. (The issue is that it's hard to check correctness of long computer codes.) As for why, the answer is relatively clear: Technological developments outpace our capacity to formulate the standards.

2. Some proofs are incredibly long, complex and verifications require specialized knowledge that very few mathematicians have. When to regard such proofs as solid is still unsettled. (Relatively) recent work of Shinichi Mochizuki on Inter-universal Teichmüller theory is one such example. (I am not going to take sides in this controversy, this is too far from my area of research.) As to why, a partial answer is the increase in specialization, when even best experts working in the same area of math do not completely understand each other. Another part of the answer is that it is only recently that we started to see proofs which (when written in detail) are over 500 page-long.

However, keep in mind that (so far) these exceptions apply only to a very small fraction of mathematical results. Hence, overall our standards of rigor in math are currently settled.

Edit. I looked up David H. Krantz. Yes, he indeed was a math major at Yale. He published just one paper in pure math (after getting his BA from Yale) and after that, all his math-related papers are in applied math (I counted 19, in applied mathematics), where standards of rigor are quite different from pure math. My remarks regarding Slovic, apply to him as well.

• Slovic didn't write this chapter. I forgot to write this, but this quotation hails from Ch 7, Constructed Preference and the Quest for Rationality, by David H. Krantz, who also isn`t a mathematician. But "David H. Krantz graduated from Yale University (Mathematics) and received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1964, Psychology)." – ugro Jun 11 at 5:19

The statement you cite is somewhat misleading. If you compare Euclid or Archimedes with modern mathematical publications, there is almost no difference in the standard of rigor.

When they say that "standard of rigor changes", they usually mean the epoch from 17 to 19 centuries when calculus was invented, and its practitioners were impatient to obtain new results, instead of working on foundations. But even at that time, best practitioners of calculus understood, that the rigor of their proofs was inferior to that of Archimedes.

Same happens in modern times. When a big discovery is made, people sometimes care less about rigor and hurry to obtain new results. If these results are important, other people work on making the proof rigorous. For example, it took about 200 years to develop rigorous foundations of calculus (which would satisfy Archimedes).

By the way, when we are speaking of Archimedes, he also obtained non-rigorous results, based on physical intuition. But he had a clear understanding of this, and carefully separated his rigorous results from non-rigorous ones.