Date:19/02/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/02/19/stories/2005021901911004.htm

Opinion - Letters to the Editor

Maths again

Sir, — This is in response to the couple of letters in these columns (Feb. 16 & 17) to the article "Incompleteness and the Goedelian way" (Feb. 15).

Not only the Goldbach conjecture, but, among others, the most famous formula for finding the circumference of the circle (pie times the diameter equals the circumference) is still unproven, pie being merely the proportionality constant. Yet this does not imply an impossibility.

As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels rightly said, nothing is unknowable in nature but many are yet to be known. This is ever relevant in respect of scientific investigations, theoretical as well as experimental.

P. Ilango Subramanian,
Chennai