Completeness
Completeness The strange case of Dr. Skolem and Mr. G¨odel∗ Gabriele Lolli The completeness theorem has a history; such is the destiny of the impor- tant theorems, those for which for a long time one does not know (whether there is anything to prove and) what to prove. In its history, one can di- stinguish at least two main paths; the first one covers the slow and difficult comprehension of the problem in (what historians consider) the traditional development of mathematical logic canon, up to G¨odel'sproof in 1930; the second path follows the L¨owenheim-Skolem theorem. Although at certain points the two paths crossed each other, they started and continued with their own aims and problems. A classical topos of the history of mathema- tical logic concerns the how and the why L¨owenheim, Skolem and Herbrand did not discover the completeness theorem, though they proved it, or whe- ther they really proved, or perhaps they actually discovered, completeness. In following these two paths, we will not always respect strict chronology, keeping the two stories quite separate, until the crossing becomes decisive. In modern pre-mathematical logic, the notion of completeness does not appear. There are some interesting speculations in Kant which, by some stretching, could be realized as bearing some relation with the problem; Kant's remarks, however, are probably more related with incompleteness, in connection with his thoughts on the derivability of transcendental ideas (or concepts of reason) from categories (the intellect's concepts) through a pas- sage to the limit; thus, for instance, the causa prima, or the idea of causality, is the limit of implication, or God is the limit of disjunction, viz., the catego- ry of \comunance".
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