_the fundamental nature of variables, abstractions, and applications_
David Hilbert 
so wanted to prove that there was a inherent truth in mathematics. That which would ground it, and its constructs, with undeniable conviction.
But in a lecture on a fateful day in 1930, Kurt Gödel introduced the first of his two incompleteness theorems throwing the entire math community into disarray. For with his two theorems, he convincingly demonstrated that no mathematical proof could ever be externally validated as being true – creating math's fundamental flaw.
But if math could not prove its own truth, what might it let us imagine? Alanzo Church was a logician and mathematician that walked into this creative unknown.
Influenced by Whitehead and Russell, Church developed lambda calculus in the 1930s to create a framework that allowed mathematicians to develop _abstractions_ of _poetic meaning_ that felt, well, _magical_ – meta-abstractions.
Lambda calculus and the meta-forming abstract thinking that lies at the heart of all modern computer languages, enabling programmers to develop increasingly more powerful algorithms that unleash the analytical and creative potential of computers – a potential that empowers computer-enabled creativity, the potential that is defining this new age.
More than that, it illuminated our inherent capacity for unfolding meaning at continually higher levels of understanding through Creative Metasynthesis in a way that it could be shared with others for cultivating collective meaning. This capacity for abstraction and communication lies at the heart of our capacity for sapience, one that aligns deeply with Friston's theories.
resources
Alma, Jesse. Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Lambda Calculus
Harry Bunt, Reinhard Muskens, Computing Meaning
Martin Davis, 2006, The Incompleteness Theorem
Alonzo Church The Journal of Symbolic Logic Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1940), pp. 56-68 (13 pages)
Bush, Vannevar (Juy 1945). As We May Think . The Atlantic Monthly. 176 (1): 101–108.
Alan Kay, Early History of Smalltalk
common pages
garden pages
garden pages to be collected here