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Proof theory is a major branch[1] ofmathematical logic andtheoretical computer science within whichproofs are treated as formalmathematical objects, facilitating their analysis by mathematical techniques. Proofs are typically presented asinductively defineddata structures such aslists, boxed lists, ortrees, which are constructed according to theaxioms andrules of inference of a given logical system. Consequently, proof theory issyntactic in nature, in contrast tomodel theory, which issemantic in nature.
Some of the major areas of proof theory includestructural proof theory,ordinal analysis,provability logic,proof-theoretic semantics,reverse mathematics,proof mining,automated theorem proving, andproof complexity. Much research also focuses on applications in computer science, linguistics, and philosophy.
Although the formalisation of logic was much advanced by the work of such figures asGottlob Frege,Giuseppe Peano,Bertrand Russell, andRichard Dedekind, the story of modern proof theory is often seen as being established byDavid Hilbert, who initiated what is calledHilbert's program in theFoundations of Mathematics. The central idea of this program was that if we could givefinitary proofs of consistency for all the sophisticated formal theories needed by mathematicians, then we could ground these theories by means of a metamathematical argument, which shows that all of their purely universal assertions (more technically their provable sentences) are finitarily true; once so grounded we do not care about the non-finitary meaning of their existential theorems, regarding these as pseudo-meaningful stipulations of the existence of ideal entities.
The failure of the program was induced byKurt Gödel'sincompleteness theorems, which showed that anyω-consistent theory that is sufficiently strong to express certain simple arithmetic truths, cannot prove its own consistency, which on Gödel's formulation is a sentence. However, modified versions of Hilbert's program emerged and research has been carried out on related topics. This has led, in particular, to:
In parallel to the rise and fall of Hilbert's program, the foundations ofstructural proof theory were being founded.Jan Łukasiewicz suggested in 1926 that one could improve onHilbert systems as a basis for the axiomatic presentation of logic if one allowed the drawing of conclusions from assumptions in the inference rules of the logic. In response to this,Stanisław Jaśkowski (1929) andGerhard Gentzen (1934) independently provided such systems, called calculi ofnatural deduction, with Gentzen's approach introducing the idea of symmetry between the grounds for asserting propositions, expressed inintroduction rules, and the consequences of accepting propositions in theelimination rules, an idea that has proved very important in proof theory.[2] Gentzen (1934) further introduced the idea of thesequent calculus, a calculus advanced in a similar spirit that better expressed the duality of the logical connectives,[3] and went on to make fundamental advances in the formalisation of intuitionistic logic, and provide the firstcombinatorial proof of the consistency ofPeano arithmetic. Together, the presentation of natural deduction and the sequent calculus introduced the fundamental idea ofanalytic proof to proof theory.
Structural proof theory is the subdiscipline of proof theory that studies the specifics ofproof calculi. The three most well-known styles of proof calculi are:
Each of these can give a complete and axiomatic formalization ofpropositional orpredicate logic of either theclassical orintuitionistic flavour, almost anymodal logic, and manysubstructural logics, such asrelevance logic orlinear logic. Indeed, it is unusual to find a logic that resists being represented in one of these calculi.
Proof theorists are typically interested in proof calculi that support a notion ofanalytic proof. The notion of analytic proof was introduced by Gentzen for the sequent calculus; there the analytic proofs are those that arecut-free. Much of the interest in cut-free proofs comes from thesubformula property: every formula in the end sequent of a cut-free proof is a subformula of one of the premises. This allows one to show consistency of the sequent calculus easily; if the empty sequent were derivable it would have to be a subformula of some premise, which it is not. Gentzen's midsequent theorem, the Craig interpolation theorem, and Herbrand's theorem also follow as corollaries of the cut-elimination theorem.
Gentzen's natural deduction calculus also supports a notion of analytic proof, as shown byDag Prawitz. The definition is slightly more complex: we say the analytic proofs are thenormal forms, which are related to the notion of normal form in term rewriting. More exotic proof calculi such asJean-Yves Girard'sproof nets also support a notion of analytic proof.
A particular family of analytic proofs arising inreductive logic arefocused proofs which characterise a large family of goal-directed proof-search procedures. The ability to transform a proof system into a focused form is a good indication of its syntactic quality, in a manner similar to how admissibility of cut shows that a proof system is syntactically consistent.[4]
Structural proof theory is connected totype theory by means of theCurry–Howard correspondence, which observes a structural analogy between the process of normalisation in the natural deduction calculus and beta reduction in thetyped lambda calculus. This provides the foundation for theintuitionistic type theory developed byPer Martin-Löf, and is often extended to a three way correspondence, the third leg of which are thecartesian closed categories.
Other research topics in structural theory include analytic tableau, which apply the central idea of analytic proof from structural proof theory to provide decision procedures and semi-decision procedures for a wide range of logics, and the proof theory of substructural logics.
Ordinal analysis is a powerful technique for providing combinatorial consistency proofs for subsystems of arithmetic, analysis, and set theory.Gödel's second incompleteness theorem is often interpreted as demonstrating that finitistic consistency proofs are impossible for theories of sufficient strength. Ordinal analysis allows one to measure precisely the infinitary content of the consistency of theories. For a consistent recursively axiomatized theory T, one can prove in finitistic arithmetic that the well-foundedness of a certain transfinite ordinal implies the consistency of T. Gödel's second incompleteness theorem implies that the well-foundedness of such an ordinal cannot be proved in the theory T.
Consequences of ordinal analysis include (1) consistency of subsystems of classical second order arithmetic and set theory relative to constructive theories, (2) combinatorial independence results, and (3) classifications of provably total recursive functions and provably well-founded ordinals.
Ordinal analysis was originated by Gentzen, who proved the consistency of Peano Arithmetic usingtransfinite induction up to ordinal ε0. Ordinal analysis has been extended to many fragments of first and second order arithmetic and set theory. One major challenge has been the ordinal analysis of impredicative theories. The first breakthrough in this direction was Takeuti's proof of the consistency of Π1
1-CA0 using the method of ordinal diagrams.
Provability logic is amodal logic, in which the box operator is interpreted as 'it is provable that'. The point is to capture the notion of a proof predicate of a reasonably richformal theory. As basic axioms of the provability logic GL (Gödel-Löb), which captures provable inPeano Arithmetic, one takes modal analogues of the Hilbert-Bernays derivability conditions andLöb's theorem (if it is provable that the provability of A implies A, then A is provable).
Some of the basic results concerning the incompleteness of Peano Arithmetic and related theories have analogues in provability logic. For example, it is a theorem in GL that if a contradiction is not provable then it is not provable that a contradiction is not provable (Gödel's second incompleteness theorem). There are also modal analogues of the fixed-point theorem.Robert Solovay proved that the modal logic GL is complete with respect to Peano Arithmetic. That is, the propositional theory of provability in Peano Arithmetic is completely represented by the modal logic GL. This straightforwardly implies that propositional reasoning about provability in Peano Arithmetic is complete and decidable.
Other research in provability logic has focused on first-order provability logic,polymodal provability logic (with one modality representing provability in the object theory and another representing provability in the meta-theory), andinterpretability logics intended to capture the interaction between provability and interpretability. Some very recent research has involved applications of graded provability algebras to the ordinal analysis of arithmetical theories.
Reverse mathematics is a program inmathematical logic that seeks to determine which axioms are required to prove theorems of mathematics.[5] The field was founded byHarvey Friedman. Its defining method can be described as "going backwards from thetheorems to theaxioms", in contrast to the ordinary mathematical practice of deriving theorems from axioms. The reverse mathematics program was foreshadowed by results in set theory such as the classical theorem that theaxiom of choice andZorn's lemma are equivalent overZF set theory. The goal of reverse mathematics, however, is to study possible axioms of ordinary theorems of mathematics rather than possible axioms for set theory.
In reverse mathematics, one starts with a framework language and a base theory—a core axiom system—that is too weak to prove most of the theorems one might be interested in, but still powerful enough to develop the definitions necessary to state these theorems. For example, to study the theorem "Every bounded sequence ofreal numbers has asupremum" it is necessary to use a base system that can speak of real numbers and sequences of real numbers.
For each theorem that can be stated in the base system but is not provable in the base system, the goal is to determine the particular axiom system (stronger than the base system) that is necessary to prove that theorem. To show that a systemS is required to prove a theoremT, two proofs are required. The first proof showsT is provable fromS; this is an ordinary mathematical proof along with a justification that it can be carried out in the systemS. The second proof, known as areversal, shows thatT itself impliesS; this proof is carried out in the base system. The reversal establishes that no axiom systemS′ that extends the base system can be weaker thanS while still proving T.
One striking phenomenon in reverse mathematics is the robustness of theBig Five axiom systems. In order of increasing strength, these systems are named by the initialisms RCA0, WKL0, ACA0, ATR0, and Π1
1-CA0. Nearly every theorem of ordinary mathematics that has been reverse mathematically analyzed has been proven equivalent to one of these five systems. Much recent research has focused on combinatorial principles that do not fit neatly into this framework, like RT2
2 (Ramsey's theorem for pairs).
Research in reverse mathematics often incorporates methods and techniques fromrecursion theory as well as proof theory.
Functional interpretations are interpretations of non-constructive theories in functional ones. Functional interpretations usually proceed in two stages. First, one "reduces" a classical theory C to an intuitionistic one I. That is, one provides a constructive mapping that translates the theorems of C to the theorems of I. Second, one reduces the intuitionistic theory I to a quantifier free theory of functionals F. These interpretations contribute to a form of Hilbert's program, since they prove the consistency of classical theories relative to constructive ones. Successful functional interpretations have yielded reductions of infinitary theories to finitary theories and impredicative theories to predicative ones.
Functional interpretations also provide a way to extract constructive information from proofs in the reduced theory. As a direct consequence of the interpretation one usually obtains the result that any recursive function whose totality can be proven either in I or in C is represented by a term of F. If one can provide an additional interpretation of F in I, which is sometimes possible, this characterization is in fact usually shown to be exact. It often turns out that the terms of F coincide with a natural class of functions, such as the primitive recursive or polynomial-time computable functions. Functional interpretations have also been used to provide ordinal analyses of theories and classify their provably recursive functions.
The study of functional interpretations began with Kurt Gödel's interpretation of intuitionistic arithmetic in a quantifier-free theory of functionals of finite type. This interpretation is commonly known as theDialectica interpretation. Together with the double-negation interpretation of classical logic in intuitionistic logic, it provides a reduction of classical arithmetic to intuitionistic arithmetic.
Theinformal proofs of everyday mathematical practice are unlike theformal proofs of proof theory. They are rather like high-level sketches that would allow an expert to reconstruct a formal proof at least in principle, given enough time and patience. For most mathematicians, writing a fully formal proof is too pedantic and long-winded to be in common use.
Formal proofs are constructed with the help of computers ininteractive theorem proving. Significantly, these proofs can be checked automatically, also by computer. Checking formal proofs is usually simple, whereasfinding proofs (automated theorem proving) is generally hard. An informal proof in the mathematics literature, by contrast, requires weeks ofpeer review to be checked, and may still contain errors.
Inlinguistics,type-logical grammar,categorial grammar andMontague grammar apply formalisms based on structural proof theory to give a formalnatural language semantics.
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