ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a simple warning that there are logical traps in the description of numbers by words. The Kurt Godel and Turing theorems show that in mathematics, just as in science, hard limits are set to what mathematicians can know. When certain shortcomings in mathematics were found along lines analogous to the liar paradox, mathematicians looked for greater rigour in mathematical proofs. Edmund Taylor Whittaker was very active in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which he was President 1939–1943, and held the Edinburgh Mathematics Chair for 34 years. There is a clay model of the world in front of the Hall of Mathematics of the Buddhist temple Yong He Gong in Beijing. In mathematics ‘infinity’ has the interpretation of something larger than any conceivable number. Of course many codes are known, and some encode texts rather than numbers.
