In writing mathematical proofs, I've been struck that direct proofs often seem

In writing mathematical proofs, I've been struck that direct proofs often seem

In writing mathematical proofs, I've been struck that direct proofs often seem to offer a kind of explanation for the theorem in question; an answer the question, "Why is this true?", as it were. By contrast, proofs by contradiction or indirect proofs often seem to lack this explanatory element, even if they they work just as well to prove the theorem. The thing is, I'm not sure it really makes sense to talk of mathematical "explanations." In science, explanations usually seem to involve finding some kind of mechanism behind a particular phenomenon or observation. But it isn't clear that anything similar happens in math. To take the opposing view, it seems plausible to suppose that all we can really talk about in math is logical entailment. And so, if both a direct and an indirect proof entail the theorem in question, it's a mistake to think that the former is giving us something that the latter is not. Do the panelists have any insight into this?

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