From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 02:31:13 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>
Subject: Re: Goldbach's Conjecture (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199811201515.JAA10514@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <3655A68B.CB9EE8DE@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jim Choate wrote:

> What started this whole enquiry for me was the realization that the
> multiplication identity axiom is related to the definition of a prime. Then
> add on top of that the reason we exclude 1 is so we don't have to write
> '...except for the prime 1' on the end of lots of number theory (re Richard
> Feynman's comment during the Challenger Investigation). It was the
> realization that if we go ahead and include 1 so the axioms are in line with
> each other (and use our cut&paste feature for the '...1...') then perhaps it
> would provide a more consistent base and just maybe some of the extant
> problems in number theory might become solvable in other ways. My original
> intention was to get a copy of Doug Lenat's EURISKO theorem proving program
> and change the definition of prime in its database and note the results
> (after converting it to Perl from LISP). What started all that is that I'm
> slowly going through 'An Introduction to Algebraic Structures' by J. Landin
> (Dover) creating a cheat-sheet of number theory that eventualy I hope to post
> on my webpage for reference.

If you 'define' 1 to be 'prime', you are 'defining' Goldbach's
conjecture 'away'! 

M. K. Shen