Mathematical impossibilities
It is sometimes said that in the 1800s problems such as trisecting angles, squaring the circle, solving quintics, and integrating functions like Exp[x2] were proved mathematically impossible. But what was actually done was just to show that these problems could not be solved in terms of particular levels of mathematical constructs—say square roots (as in ruler and compass constructions discussed on page 1129), arbitrary roots, or elementary transcendental functions. And in each case higher mathematical constructs that seem in some sense no less implementable immediately allow the problems to be solved. Yet with undecidability one believes that there is absolutely no construct that can explicitly exist in our universe that allows the problem to be solved in any finite way. And unlike traditional mathematical impossibilities, undecidability is normally formulated purely in terms of ordinary integers—making it in a sense necessary to collapse basic distinctions between finite and infinite quantities if any higher-level constructs are to be included.
