[Aurelius]

I'm no expert on the Principia, never cracked it for that matter, except maybe to see what I looked like. But it's hard for me to see how they could have defined 2, except essentially as 1 + 1.

As for Fermat's last theorem, God, of course, could have checked that out case by case. You don't have to check it for all powers, only for 4 and the primes.

[onedoug]

Which are infinite....

Though it was proven by proving it is modular. But you knew that, didn't you?

[RightWhale]

the Principia

The assertion chain starts out as flat binary, but becomes as 3-D as English semantics before the end of volume 1. IMHO the Principia is a non-orientable manifold.

[gjenkins]

"But it's hard for me to see how they could have defined 2, except essentially as 1 + 1."

1 what? + 1 what? Lambda calculus formalizes it and holds on to the abstractness. I don't really get Lambda calculus, but I remember thinking that during a lecture on it.