The proof no human has read
Global in scope·An enduring case
The 1976 proof of the four colour theorem relied on computer checking of hundreds of case configurations that no mathematician could verify by hand, and parts of the community initially refused it the status of proof. The theorem now stands, and the objection quietly became a definition question: proof for whom?
The concepts this raises
Each of these gives a class a different way into the same case.
- JustificationGrounds of Knowledge
- The reasoning that connects evidence to a conclusion. Two knowers can hold the same evidence and be justified in different beliefs if their inferential standards differ. Justification is what separates knowing something from happening to be right about it.
- CertaintyStatus of Knowledge
- The degree to which doubt about a claim has been closed off. Certainty is a state of the knower, not of the claim, which is why a claim can be true without anyone being certain of it and why confidence and reliability can come apart badly.
Where it sits in the knowledge framework
- Methods and tools
- The practices, conventions, instruments and forms of reasoning through which knowledge here is actually made, together with the assumptions those methods build in and what they are structurally unable to detect.
Areas of knowledge
Themes
The same ideas, somewhere else
Cases that raise a concept this one raises, but in a different area of knowledge or a different part of the world. That contrast is the point: it is what shows a student the concept travels.
- Global
The textbook findings that would not repeat
Large replication projects in psychology found that many celebrated effects shrank or vanished on rerun, implicating flexible analysis, publication bias and…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Certainty
- Justification
- India
Evacuating a million people on a forecast
Before Cyclone Fani struck Odisha in 2019, forecasts triggered the evacuation of over a million people, and the death toll stayed in double digits where a…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Certainty
- Responsibility
- South Asia
The third umpire and the ball that never arrived
A batter is given not out. The fielding side reviews. On the big screen, a tracking system reconstructs the ball's flight, and then continues it past the point…
Enduring · The natural sciences · Mathematics
- Evidence
- Certainty
- Interpretation
- India
The night the exit polls were wrong
Ahead of India's 2024 general election results, exit polls converged on a sweeping majority for the incumbent alliance; the counted votes delivered something…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty
- Africa
A song as a political argument
Fela Kuti's long-form Afrobeat pieces named institutions, described mechanisms and accused specific powers, and the Nigerian state responded with raids and…
Enduring · The arts
- Power
- Justification
- South Asia
Does microcredit work? Ask which study
Microcredit spread from Bangladesh on powerful anecdotes of transformation; later randomised trials found modest average effects and few of the promised…
Enduring · The human sciences
- Evidence
- Certainty