Tarski and Gödel: Between the lines (Q2702728)

The author contrasts the contributions of perhaps the two major figures in logic and foundational studies in mathematics in the 1930s. As personalities they were maximally different, but their work overlapped in various respects. One not mentioned explicitly by the author is their independent recognition of the central place in logic, and thereby in philosophy on general, of the distinction of logic/theory/language from metalogic/theory/language, and the consequent stratification of knowledge. This was one of the main legacies from Gödel's famous incompletability paper of 1931; the author's statement that the `logical world at large' took `about a year to absorb' (p. 55) is considerably optimistic. On Gödel's training the author mentions Carnap's Seminars on logic in 1928-1929 (p. 54) but not Schlick's course of 1915-1926 on the philosophy of mathematics, where Russell's popular introduction to logicism was the set text.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0948.00030].