Hao Wang

Logical Journey

Hao Wang (1921-1995) was one of the few confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Goedel. A Logical Journey is a continuation of Wang's Reflections on Goedel and also elaborates on discussions contained in From Mathematics to Philosophy. A decade in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into Goedel'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 Goedel's theorem on twentieth-century thought is on par with that of Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or Keynesian economics. These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify Goedel's other major contributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in Goedel's philosophy of mathematics than is commonly believed, and more in his philosophy than his 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."The first two chapters are devoted to Goedel's life and mental development. In the chapters that follow, Wang illustrates the quest for overarching solutions and grand unifications of knowledge and action in Goedel's written speculations on God and an afterlife. He gives the background and a chronological summary of the conversations, considers Goedel's comments on philosophies and philosophers (his support of Husserl's phenomenology and his digressions on Kant and Wittgenstein), and his attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the mind's power over brains and machines. Three chapters are tied together by what Wang perceives to be Goedel's governing ideal of philosophy: an exact theory in which mathematics and Newtonian physics serve as a model for philosophy or metaphysics. Finally, in an epilog Wang sketches his own approach to philosophy in contrast to his interpretation of Goedel's outlook.