Kurt Godel: Conviction and Caution
Solomon Feferman · 1998
Abstract In the course of preparing an introductory chapter on Godel for a comprehensive edition of his works,* I was struck by the great contrast between the deep platonistic convictions which Godel held concerning the objective basis of mathematics and the special caution that he exercised in revealing those convictions. Godel said that he had arrived at a position of philosophical realism early in his university years, and he credited his enormous successes in mathematical logic during the 1930s almost entirely to his holding this point of view.1 Yet there is hardly a word throughout that period giving any indication of his attitude; indeed, the first open expression of it came only in 1944. I was led to seek the reasons for his guarded disposition and to speculate on whether it might have affected his work and choice of problems, especially whether there were things that he refrained from doing in consequence. In particular, it seemed to me that he could well have been more centrally involved in the development of the fundamental concepts of modern logic-truth and computability-than he was; in fact his role turned out to be peripheral in both cases.