Sunday reflection... from Rebecca Goldstein in "Incompleteness: the proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel":
"So the question is: Whence certainty? What is our source for mathematical certainty? The bedrock of empirical knowledge consists of sense perceptions: what I am directly given to know -- or at least to think -- of the external world through my senses of sight and hearing and touch and smell. Sense perception allows us to make contact with what's out there in physical reality. What is the bedrock of mathematical knowledge? Is there something like sense perception in mathematics? Do mathematical intuitions constitute this bedrock? Is our faculty for intuition the means for making contact with what's out there in mathematical reality? Or is there just no 'there'?"
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