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Kurt GöDel. Das Album—The Album

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Kurt GöDel. Das Album—The Album Rurweg 3 synopses of G6del's 1931 incomplete- a few; he also quickly found for him- D-41844 Wegberg ness theorems, the Erkenntnis piece of self a society of like-minded and, judg- Germany 1931 due to G6del himself, and the text ing from the photographs, high-living, e-mail: [email protected] of a lecture delivered in Vienna in 1932 university friends, who, as was cus- by Karl Menger. And although the au- tomary then in Vienna, spent their days thors write in the introduction that the in a series of roving discussions in cafes, Kurt GOdel. Das book is meant as an "easily digestible some of which are pictured. Many of introduction" to G6del's life, work, and these friends were to go on to promi- the Viennese culture in which he lived nent positions in post-war academia: Album-The Album and flourished, it will undoubtedly be Herbert Feigl, for example, a student of Karl Sigmund, John Dawson, and of interest to readers on every level, Moritz Schlick and one of G6del's best Kurt Mfihlberger, with a Foreword by from newcomers to this area of the his- friends, was to become president of the Hans Magnus Enzensberger tory of mathematics to seasoned logi- American Philosophical Association-- cians and mathematicians. but he is seen here as a young man ca- WIESBADEN, VIEWEG, 2006, 225 PP., WITH 200 vorting at the beach with the Schlick PICTURES, (~29,90, ISBN 3-8348-0173-9 G6del's Life family. Other friends from this period "GOdel in a good mood and brilliant as who would later emigrate to the United REVIEWED BY JULIETrE KENNEDY usual .... I like him infinitely much and States include Karl Menger, Olga no one, no one of my friends can stim- Taussky, and Oskar Morgenstern. he Austrian logician Kurt G6del, ulate me as he does." So wrote G6del's Schlick, a central figure in the Vien- a brilliant man beset by misfor- friend Oskar Morgenstern after visiting nese philosophical culture at the time, T tunes of all kinds, has drawn the with G6del, presumably sometime in was, together with Hans Hahn, the attention of a number of biographers-- the mid-1970s. leader of the so-called Vienna Circle, with mixed results. One wonders about A number of interesting documents also called the Schlick Circle, a discus- the rights of the deceased in such mat- are included in this first section. For ex- sion group G6del attended that quickly ters. These lines from Othello's final so- ample, a few pages from one of G6del's became identified with the doctrine of liloquy (from Act 5 of Shakespeare's schoolbooks are reproduced on page "logical positivism" (a term coined by play) seem quite apt: 18. They are undated, but GOdel must Feigl and Blumberg in their 1931 "Log- I have done the state some service have been a very young child when he ical positivism: A new movement in Eu- and they know't. wrote these lines. In a typical example ropean philosophy" [1]). G6del was No more of that. I pray you, in your of the old-fashioned rote method of never drawn to logical positivism him- letters, teaching, in the workbook GOdel had self, but the exposure to the discussions When you shall these unlucky deeds to write the symbols "+" and the num- that took place at those meetings must relate, bers "2" and "Y' a hundred (or more) have been crucial to his development Speak of me as I am. Nothing ex- times, presumably for practice, and then as a logician. Otto Neurath, Karl tenuate, finally the equations "1 + 1 = 2" and Menger, Gustav Bergmann, Rudolf Car- Nor aught set down in malice. "2 + 1 = 3." But then his mind wan- nap, and Friedrich Waismann were just Such being the case, Kurt GOdel. The dered and he wrote "1+ = 21." His re- a few of the regular members; Ludwig Album comes as a welcome addition port card of February 10, 1917 is here Wittgenstein visited periodically, as did to the literature on G6del. As the cat- too, on page 19, and there we see that outsiders like Frank Ramsey and W.V.O. alogue of the exhibition which took the I0-year-old boy rated "sehr gut" in Quine. place at the University of Vienna this every subject--except mathematics!, in That Hahn and Schlick would come year in conjunction with the celebra- which he only rated a "gut." together to lead this historic seminar tion there on the occasion of G6del's A fascinating set of pictures and cap- was characteristic of the hybrid nature centennial, it is to a large extent made tions deal with G6del's first few years of logic at the time. G6del commented up of reproductions of documents and in Vienna, where he became a student on this to Hao Wang in the late 1970s photographs with accompanying com- at the University of Vienna in 1924. It ([4], p. 82): mentary. And while far too many of the seems to have been a golden time for When I entered the field of logic, letters and other documents are un- G6del, intellectually and in other ways there were fifty percent philosophy dated, compromising the historical too. One could hardly walk down the and fifty percent mathematics. There value of the volume, it is nevertheless street in Vienna in the 1920s without are now ninety percent mathematics one of the most fascinating and also bumping into a major cultural or scien- and only one percent philosophy... one of the most corrective books to ap- tific luminary of the twentieth century-- G6del began his studies in Vienna pear about G6del so far. and the University of Vienna was no in 1924 in physics with Hans Thirring; The book is divided into three sec- less blessed in this respect. G6del at- and although he switched to mathe- tions: a biographical section comprising tended lectures by Philipp Furtw~ngler roughly half of the book, a section de- (cousin of the great conductor), Hein- The voted to GOdel's work, a brief section rich Gomperz, Hans Hahn, Moritz sun was" setting on this titled "GOdel's Vienna." These are fol- Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap (all of golden period of G6del's life lowed by an appendix consisting of two whom are pictured here), to name just 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., Volume 29, Number 3, 2007 73 matics two years later, studying first lectures. Such an occasion is pictured tion involving the interrogation of number theory under Furtw~ingler and in a chilling photograph on page 55 of G6del's friends and colleagues. Never- then logic under Hahn and, informally, the book. theless, G6del was eventually granted Carnap, he continued to take physics Finally, in a tragic symptom of the the Dozentur in 1940; but by that time courses up to the time he graduated in times, Schlick was assassinated at the he and his wife Adele had already 1929. The background in physics G6del university in 1936 by an ex-student moved to the United States. The G6dels obtained as a student may explain his named Nelb6ck, whom GOdel knew were never to return to Europe. In fact being able to make a significant con- from his mathematics and philosophy G6del would write to his mother (in a tribution to relativity in 1947. (See [2].) classes. After mounting a defense based letter reproduced on page 87) that for In fact, G6del wrote this about his work on the idea that Schlick's atheism had a time he was plagued by nightmares in relativity in a 1955 letter to Carl caused him to become deranged, Nel- of being trapped in Vienna and not be- Seelig (see [3], p. 252): b6ck got off after serving only two years ing able to leave. I have, however, in connection with for the crime. In a post-war coda to the As for G6del's life in the United certain philosophical problems, de- Nelb6ck episode, we learn (on page States, one letter stands out particularly voted myself for some time to a less 186) that Viktor Kraft, who wrote the as a footnote to the GOdel-Thirring con- difficult complex of questions from first book about the Vienna Circle, was nection. Before G6del left Vienna for general relativity theory, namely cos- successfully sued by Nelb6ck in 1950, the United States in 1940, Thirring asked mology. The fact that here I, as a for Kraft's use of the term "persecution him to warn Einstein that Nazi Germany newcomer to the field of relativity mania" to describe Nelb6ck at the time might be in a position to develop a nu- theory, could immediately obtain es- of the assassinationithat is to say, Kraft clear weapon (the possibility of atomic sentially new results seems to me had to withdraw the expression. Need- fission having been discovered in Berlin sufficient to demonstrate the unfin- less to say, deprived of one of its found- in late December 1938, when for the ished state of the theory. ing members, the Vienna Circle broke first time fission was actually produced That the sun was setting on this up soon afterwards. in the laboratory). Many years later (in golden period of GOdel's, if not Vi- The thought of G6del in the midst of 1972) Thirring wrote to G6del and enna's, if not indeed Europe's exis- all this gives one pause, although of asked him if he had ever passed on the tence, is first alluded to on page 26, course, not being Jewish, his difficulties warning.
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