If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion,… - John Barrow

Unfortunately, truth is neither a listable nor a decidable property; nor is the truth of a statement of arithmetic. The American logician John Myhill has used the term 'prospective' to characterize those attributes of the world that are neither listable nor decidable. They are properties that cannot be recognized by the application of some formula, made to conform to a rule, or generated by some computer program. They are characterized by incessant novelty that cannot be encompassed by any finite set of rules. 'Beauty', 'ugliness', 'truth', 'harmony', simplicity', and 'poetry' are names we give to some of the attributes of this sort. There is no way of listing all examples of beauty or ugliness, nor any procedure for saying whether or not something possesses either of those attributes, without redefining them in some more restrictive fashion that kills their prospective character.

The Indian system of counting is probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by human beings. It has been universally adopted. ...It is the nearest thing we have to a universal language.

The spooky ether was persistent. It took an Einstein to remove it from the Universe. ...Gradually, over the last twenty years, the vacuum has turned out to be more unusual, more fluid, less empty, and less intangible than even Einstein could have imagined. Its presence is felt on the very smallest and largest dimensions over which the forces of Nature act.