Kurt Godel: Collected Works: Volume IV PDF
Preview Kurt Godel: Collected Works: Volume IV
Kurt Godel COLLECTED WORKS Volume IV Kurt Godel C O L L E C T ED W O R KS Volume IV Correspondence A-G EDITED BY Solomon Feferman John W. Dawson, Jr. (Editors-in-chief) Warren Goldfarb Charles Parsons Wilfried Sieg Prepared under the auspices of the Association for Symbolic Logic CLARENDON PRESS . OXFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the university's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Solomon Feferman, John W. Dawson, Jr, Warren Goldfarb, Charles Parsons, and Wilfried Sieg, 2003 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First published 2003 First published in paperback 2014 All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America ISBN 978-0-19-850073-5(Hbk) ISBN 978-0-19-968961-3(Pbk) Preface This is the fourth volume of a comprehensive edition of the works of Kurt Godel. Volumes I and II comprised all of his publications, ranging from 1929 to 1936 and from 1937 to 1974, respectively. Volume III con sisted of a selection of unpublished papers and texts for individual lectures found in Godel's Nachlafi, together with a survey of the Nachlafl. The present volume and its successor are primarily devoted to a selection of Godel's scientific correspondence and the calendars thereto. In all cases our criterion for inclusion was that letters should either possess intrinsic scientific, philosophical or historical interest or should illuminate Godel's thoughts or his personal relationships with others. Volume V, being pub lished simultaneously with this one, also contains a full inventory of his Nachlafi. There were several sources for the correspondence from which the selec tion in this and the following volume were made. The primary one was, of course, Godel's Nachlafi; we have also solicited and obtained from other archives and from individuals (or their estates) copies of correspondence that filled gaps therein. The section on Permissions, below, contains a full list of all those sources, to whom we are, of course, greatly indebted. The total number of items of personal and scientific correspondence in the Godel Nachlafi alone is around 3500, distributed over 219 folders. In the main body of these two volumes we have selected correspondence with 50 individuals from the indicated sources. The most prominent corre spondents among these are Paul Bernays, William Boone, Rudolf Carnap, Paul Cohen, Burton Dreben, Jacques Herbrand, Arend Heyting, Karl Men- ger, Ernest Nagel, Emil Post, Abraham Robinson, Alfred Tarski, Stanislaw Ulam, John von Neumann, Hao Wang and Ernst Zermelo. In addition, the reader will find in Appendix A to volume V several letters written on behalf of Godel to others by Felix Kaufmann, Dana Scott and Hao Wang. There are two major correspondents of Godel who declined to allow us to publish their side of the exchanges, namely Paul Cohen and Georg Kreisel. In the latter case, except for one item from Godel which is not included here, the correspondence was entirely a one-way street, but it is revealing of many topics of discussion of mutual interest, and thus we regret that it could not be represented. In the case of Cohen, as the reader will see, the nature of the correspondence could be fully reconstructed from the items found in Godel's Nachlafi. As in the first three volumes of this edition all the original material was written in German (sometimes in the Gabelsberger shorthand) or English, sometimes in both; those items originally in German are accompanied by facing translations. Credit for the work on the translations is contained in the Information for the reader below. Also as in the first three volumes, a v VI Preface significant component is played by introductory notes and to a greater ex tent than previously these notes have been written by the editors. We are additionally indebted in this respect to Michael Beeson, Jens Erik Fenstad, Akihiro Kanamori, 0ystein Linnebo, Moshe Machover and David Mala- ment. The purpose of the notes themselves is to provide historical context to the correspondence, explain the contents to a greater or lesser extent, and, where relevant, discuss later developments or provide a critical analy sis. Because of these requirements, several of the introductory notes turned out to be quite extensive; in those cases the reader is advised to consult them in tandem with the correspondence itself. Once more our endeavor has been to make the full body of Godel's work and thought as accessible and useful to as wide an audience as possible, without compromising the requirements of historical and scientific accu racy. As with the preceding volumes, this one is expected to be of interest and value to professionals and students in the areas of logic, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and even physics, as well as to many non- specialized readers with a broad scientific background. Naturally, even with the assistance of the introductory notes, not all of the material to be found here can be made equally accessible to such a variety of readers; nonetheless, the general reader should be able to gain some appreciation for what is at issue in the various exchanges. Work on this volume and its successor was supported in its entirety by a grant from the Sloan Foundation, whose generosity and flexibility were indispensable to their successful completion. We are also grateful to the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University for its generous assistance with some last-minute expenses. In addition, by helpful arrangement with William Joyce and Donald C. Skemer of the Princeton University library system, and with Marcia Tucker of the library of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Foundation completely underwrote the preservation microfilm ing of Godel's Nachlafl, in an effort to prevent further deterioration. That lengthy and delicate task was actually carried out by Preservation Re sources Company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As with the Nachlafi itself, one copy of the microfilms is housed at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division of Firestone Library at Princeton University; the inventory of Godel's Nachlafi to be found in volume V includes the finding aid for that. Abridged copies, excluding correspondence, are distributed by IDC Pub lishers, Inc., 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1801, New York, NY 10118 (web address: http://www.idc.nl). The editorial board for these volumes consists of the undersigned as editors-in-chief, together with Warren Goldfarb, Charles Parsons and Wil- fried Sieg. We are especially thankful to Cheryl Dawson, who performed extraordinarily sustained, careful and thorough service as managing editor over a time period that was far longer than any of us anticipated. Under her supervision, the volumes themselves were set in camera-ready copy using Preface vii the TgX system, and later ^4vi<S-TpX, in a form that had been developed / J for the previous volumes by Yasuko Kitajima; after significant initial TgX work by Kitajima, most of the remaining Tf^X work in the present volumes was carried out (promptly and with diligence—often under pressure) by Bruce S. Babcock, with the balance done by Cheryl Dawson. We were also ably assisted by Montgomery Link, who joined the effort late in the pro cess to complete the work of researching reference citations; his work under pressure is much appreciated. From the outset with volume I of these Works, the project to produce the volumes has been sponsored by the Association for Symbolic Logic, and the grants under which they were carried out were ably administered for the Association at the hands of its Secretary-Treasurers, C. Ward Henson and, since the beginning of the new millennium, Charles Steinhorn. Clerical support was provided by the Department of Mathematics of Penn State York, with special assistance, especially for the extensive photo-copying required, by Carole V. Wagner. Our editor Elizabeth Johnston at Oxford University Press (in Oxford, England) has been both encouraging and very patient. We mourn the loss of our dear friend, Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, who died of a heart attack on 19 October 1996, at the age of 69. Noted for his unusual multi-faceted career as mathematician, symphony conductor and lawyer, Stefan had both given us legal advice and provided us with considerable assistance on the translations in the previous volumes. Fol lowing the publication of volume III of these Works in 1995, he was much looking forward to further work with us to help bring the entire project to completion. Solomon Feferman and John W. Dawson, Jr. This page intentionally left blank Information for the reader Copy texts. A basic tenet of documentary editing is that published texts of letters should represent what recipients actually saw. In particular, re cipients' copies of letters should be used as copy texts whenever they are available, and readers should be made aware of authorial errors and emen dations. In the correspondence reproduced herein both of those precepts have been followed. In cases where the recipient's copy of a letter was unobtainable but the author's retained copy has been preserved, we have used the latter as our copy text. Details concerning the copy texts and their sources are provided in the calendar for each correspondent. Errors and emendations are indicated by a variety of devices, chosen with the aim of facilitating proofreading and of distracting as little as possible from readability. They are described in detail below. Arrangement of letters. Letters are grouped alphabetically according to the names of Godel's correspondents, and within each group by date. Dating of letters. The date and author's return address, when included as part of a letter, are placed flush right above the salutation and text, even if not so positioned in the original. Undated letters are identified as such and have been placed in sequence on the basis of annotations on the copy texts, postmarks on retained envelopes or internal references to other correspondence or events of known date. Conjectural dates are enclosed in double square brackets ([ ]). Editorial apparatus. Original pagination of letters, except for the first page of each, is indicated by small numbers in the outer margins of these pages. The symbol | in the text indicates the location of page breaks. Authorial errors and emendations are indicated as follows: 1. Letters or symbols that should have been deleted are backslashed 0f$4 f$f)- Spaces that should be deleted are indicated by a ligature symbol (^) below the space in question. 2. Letters or symbols that should be replaced by other letters or sym bols (including capitalization errors) are backslashed, and the symbols that should replace them are printed in small type in the inner mar gin of the page on the corresponding line. A "square cup" symbol (u) placed in the margin indicates that a symbol is to be replaced by a blank space. 3. Letters or symbols inserted by the editors are enclosed within double square brackets (| ]). Authorial insertions are enclosed within single pointed brackets (( )). (We have not distinguished among insertions made above, below, or on the line.) A caret below the line, together with the "square cup" symbol in the margin, indicates a place where a space should be inserted. ix
The list of books you might like
