Yesterday and Today

"Although Turing used the metaphor of the 'instrument of the Great Dao' to deny the omnipotence of the 'sacred voice of the Great Dao,' making this analogy rather strange here, today, I still wish to say this—we can still believe that one day, we shall face the Great Dao directly and hear its true voice."

"If someone condemns us for arrogance, if someone orders us to fulfill our human duties and abandon our pursuit of the immortal path, if someone asks why we must stubbornly remain upon glacial permafrost, where none but our fellow seekers can survive, then we may hold our heads high and answer loudly—for the eternal preservation of our Dao!"

Wang Qi ended this lecture with an impassioned tone.

As before, no one applauded. Yet many remained immersed in Wang Qi's speech.

If incompleteness and undecidability were destruction inflicted upon the original system, then Wang Qi's speech was reconstruction upon the ruins.

He had proposed directions in which Divine Land mathematics might yet break through under the dual restrictions of "incompleteness" and "undecidability," and he had even provided detailed lines of thought.

After shattering the confidence of the Myriad Dharma Sect, he then told its other cultivators where they should direct their efforts and how mathematics ought to develop next.

Anyone could offer an opinion on "development" based on their own knowledge. But not everyone's views could win broad recognition. If one spoke and received no agreement, one would simply become a laughingstock.

The last person to do this and succeed had been Xiboche, the Master of Mathematics. The existence of Ximen's Twenty-Three Questions had turned the entire Myriad Dharma Sect's inclinations around. During the era when the Master of Mathematics dominated the age, the sect's habit of "speaking of nothing but topology" gradually faded, while more