Metamathematics

Metamathematics is the study of mathematics itself using mathematical methods. This study produces metatheories, which are mathematical theories about other mathematical theories. Emphasis on metamathematics (and perhaps the creation of the term itself) owes itself to David Hilbert's attempt to secure the foundations of mathematics in the early part of the 20th Century. Metamathematics provides "a rigorous mathematical technique for investigating a great variety of foundation problems for mathematics and logic.." (Kleene 1952, p. 59). An important feature of metamathematics is its emphasis on differentiating between reasoning from inside a system and from outside a system. An informal illustration of this is categorizing the proposition "2+2=4" as belonging to mathematics while categorizing the proposition "'2+2=4' is valid" as belonging to metamathematics.

History

Metamathematical metatheorems about mathematics itself were originally differentiated from ordinary mathematical theorems in the 19th century to focus on what was then called the foundational crisis of mathematics. Richard's paradox (Richard 1905) concerning certain 'definitions' of real numbers in the English language is an example of the sort of contradictions that can easily occur if one fails to distinguish between mathematics and metamathematics. Something similar can be said around the well-known Russell's paradox (Does the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?).