NEITHER Dr. Hilbert nor the reviewer make any suggestion that the commutative law of addition is best proved as a deduction from the laws of multiplication. But the laws of multiplication are so often ...

Reprinted from The Joy of X: A guided tour of math, from one to infinity by Steven Strogatz. Copyright ©2012 Steven Strogatz. Reprinted with permission from Houghton ...

REFERRING to the review of Hilbert's “Grundlagen der Geometric,” on p. 394 of No. 2066 of NATURE (June 3), may I point out that the commutative law of addition can be proved without the help of any ...