Language Lab, University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis

The Loss of Certainty - Part II

In the second part of the article, certain words have been removed from the text; choose the correct word for each of the gaps below.

These three crises could be hinting that the GAP 1 dominant Platonic conception of mathematics is inadequate. As Davies remarks, "These crises GAP 2 simply be analogous to GAP 3 that human beings will never be able to construct buildings a thousand kilometres GAP 4 and that imagining what such buildings might "really" be like is simply indulging in fantasies. We GAP 5 a profound and irreversible change in mathematics GAP 6 will affect decisively GAP 7 character. Mathematics will be seen GAP 8 the creation of finite human beings, liable to error in the same way as all other activities in which we indulge. Just as in engineering, mathematicians will GAP 9 to declare their degree of confidence that certain results are reliable, rather GAP 10 being able to declare flatly that the proofs are correct.

 

 

GAP 1
actually
currently
temporarily

 

GAP 2
may
have
may have

 

GAP 3
realizating
counting
realizing

 

GAP 4
high
height
highly

 

GAP 5
witness
are witnessing
have witnessing

 

GAP 6
that
who
what

 

GAP 7
his
it's
its

 

GAP 8
as
by
at

 

 

GAP 9
should
have
must

 

GAP 10
than
then

 

 

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