A Logical Journey: From Godel to Philosophy

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HAD WANG

LOGICAL JOURNEY

From GOdeI to

HAD WANG

A LOGICAL JOURNEY From Godel to Philosophy

Hao Wang (1921-1995) was onc of the few confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Code!. A Logical Journey is

of Wang's Reflections

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continuation

Kurt G6deJ and also

elaborates on discussions contained in From Math-

ematics to Philosophy. A decade in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into

Codel's views on a wide range of issues, from Platonism and the nature of logic, to minds and machines, the existence of God, and positivism and phenomenology.

The impact of Godel's theorem on rwentiethcentury thought is on a par with that of Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty prin-

ciple, or Keynesian economics. These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify GOdel's other major comributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in GOOel's philosophy of mathematics than is commonly realized, and more in his philosophy than merely a philosophy of mathematics. Wang writes that "it is even possible that his quite informal and loosely structured conversations with me, which I am freely using in this

book, will turn out to be the fullest existing expression of the diverse components of his inadequately articulated general philosophy." Hao Wang was Professor of Logic at Rockefeller University and the author of Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to What We Know and Reflections on Kurt Code/. A Bradford Bookcopy- j." "'ate,

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