A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy [Hardcover]

Hao Wang (Author)

Book Description

Series: Representation and Mind | Publication Date: January 10, 1997

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 These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify Gödel's other major contributions to logic and philosophy.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 unifications 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 or metaphysics. Finally, in an epilog Wang sketches his own approach to philosophy in contrast to his interpretation of Gödel's outlook.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Experts in mathematical logic will find this book of engrossing interest.For mere philosphers it will have a different fascination: in seeing howthe achievements of a genius can seem to him to provide a firm foundationfor a species of Platonism and the conviction of the superiority of mindsover computers, and at the same time can encourage him to favour aquasi-Leibnizian speculative metaphysics and theology. Hao Wang recordsand assesses the whole with an expert and balanced reasonableness." Sir Peter F. Strawson, Magdalen College, Oxford

About the Author

Hao Wang was Professor of Logic at Rockefeller University and the author of Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to What We Know and Reflections on Kurt Gödel.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: A Bradford Book (January 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262231891
• ISBN-13: 978-0262231893
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meet Gödel the philosopher, June 6, 2000

By 

Kevin Carmody - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (Hardcover)

Many mathematicians know about Gödel's famous theorem. But very few know about Gödel the man. Through this book, we come to know the man, especially Gödel the philosopher.

Through this book we find out that although Gödel and Einstein were close friends, Gödel, unlike Einstein, shunned public debate. He held philosophical views which he knew would be very controversial if he were to publicize them, and he greatly disliked publshing anything he could not prove rigorously. Accoringly, he instructed his biographer to publish these viewpoints only after his death.

This book contains hundreds of quotations from Gödel's conversations with the author. Fortunately, the author left in quotations that he he said he did not understand, trusting that others might.

Here are a few quotes:

"Consciousness is connected with one unity. A machine is composed of parts."

"The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit."

"Materialism is false."

"Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful . . . . We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole."

If you find Gödel's theorem interesting, I hope you will read this book and found out more about the man behind the theorem.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hao Wang, Unsung Hero, May 15, 2007

By 

C. L. Vash (Altadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (Hardcover)

Wang's presentation of Godel brings the supergenius mathematical logician within the reach of people who are neither logicians nor mathematicians ... at least occasionally. "Godel, Escher and Bach," a previous best-seller effort, didn't manage to do that. I never thought I could or would stay with a book I comprehended so little. It was like digging through a 5 gallon drum of sunflower seeds in search of a cupful of sesame seeds that I could digest and metabolize. But I couldn't stop! Every time I found one of those sesame seeds I could understand and maybe even use to help me understand something else, I got a rush of motivation to keep on reading, in hopes there would be at least one more such sesame seed! The reason was Wang's delivery, based on his very way of being. He is a smart, trained mathematical logician himself who grew up in a contrasting philosophical culture [featuring Chinese nontheistic assumptions] and he managed to become as humble and honest and open minded and open hearted an individual as I have yet encountered in person or on the printed page. His use of self disclosure ... an au currant recommended practice among scientist science writers ... demonstrates a Goldilocks model for others to follow: not too much -- no egotistical tangents, and not too little -- he is remarkably clear about his own assumptons, biases and prejudices. Even if you don't care much about understanding Godel, the book is worth reading to get acquainted with Hao Wang.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a genius yet to be understood, January 18, 2011

By 

a reader (Taipei) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (Hardcover)

Kurt Godel 1906-1978 is undoubtly the greatest logician of all time and probably the most misunderstood thinker in human history -thus far. The editors of his 5-volume "Collected Works" and his biographers have only very narrow-minded ideas of this extraordinary figure. The late Hao Wang's "Logical Journey" also merely scratches the surface of the richness of Godel's thinking. Even so, I've read this book dozens of times in the past 15 years and never failed to get something new per reading.

To be honest, I have largely skipped over Wang's own ideas (but eventually I've read even these several times in their entirety) and largely concentrated on what Godel himself says - or at least what Wang has filtered out for us as Godel's sayings. It is abundantly clear that Wang understands very little of Godel, in spite of his almost 20 years' efforts. Curiously, this seems to be a major merit of the book because there is little likelihood that Wang could - or would wish to - fabricate numerous Godelian remarks which he himself had felt to be so obsurd and had been resisted by him for years before he finally published them.

Having said the above, "Logical Journey" is nevertheless the only existing book which has genuinely striven hard to understand the enigmatic Godel. Future serious Godel scholarship beyond it should be based upon the enormous bulk of Godel's unpublished notes recorded in the German shorthand Gabelsberger.