A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy [= Goedel]

Hao Wang (1921-1995) was one of the few
confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. A Logical
Journey is a continuation of Wang's Reflections on Gödel and also
elaborates on discussions contained in From Mathematics to Philosophy. A decade
in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into Gödel'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 Gödel'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 These previously unpublished intimate and informal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 Gödel's other major
contributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in Gödel'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 Gödel's life and mental development. In
the chapters that follow, Wang illustrates the quest for overarching solutions
and grand unification of knowledge and action in Gödel's written speculations
on God and an afterlife. He gives the background and a chronological summary of
the conversations, considers Gödel'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 Gödel's governing ideal of philosophy: an exact theory in which
mathematics and Newtonian physics serve as a model for philosophy