Here’s a history/philosophy question. We are often told that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems were a defeat for Hilbert’s program — that there was no method to find all the truths about mathematics, or even all the theorems. But in the modern age, we seem to view this as liberating — as a source of endless creativity, rather than a defeat — since it means mathematics will never be complete, and there will always be room for new proof techniques and new forms of reasoning. When did this shift first occur? Who first said “You mean no axiomatic system can prove everything, and no algorithm can tell us what it can prove? That’s great!” Any help tracking down early quotes along these lines would be greatly appreciated, for a piece that a friend of mine and I are writing. Best! - Cris p.s. I guess the same could be said about P vs. NP — who first said “some search problems are [probably] really hard, including telling whether short proofs exist? that’s great!"