Reply to comment

"the strong draw of formal systems" is indeed, I suspect, related to a wish for certainty, "security," as well as a reliable sense of "meaningfulness" (see Evolution/Science: inverting the relationship between meaning and randomness)  And I too think we all experience/act out of it to varying degrees, and could usefully learn to recognize the limitations of the formal systems approach.  But, I'd argue, its not "all about the impossibility of using formal systems."  To the contrary, its about "the impossibility of using formal systems to achieve any fixed and unchallengeable certainty/security/meaningfulness."  We all can and should (and inevitably will) go on using formal systems to various degrees for various purposes. They are very useful, not only as a tool to summarize observations to date but also to open for exploration new ways of thinking about things.  What we need to do is not to get rid of them but to accept their limitations ... and, perhaps, to give up the search for absolute certainty/security/meaning, and settle for making the best sense we can now of what we have to make sense of.  Maybe we could even learn to enjoy uncertainty/insecurity/the lack of absolute meaning as the space that allows us to be meaningful participants in the creation of "opportunities that weren't there before and ... meaning that had yet to occur to us" (Evolution/Science).