Abstract
The evening before my talk at this conference on “Tarski and the Vienna Circle”, Professor Hans Sluga of the University of California at Berkeley made the important point that we should discuss not only the historical past but also its impact — in other words, what happened (or did not happen) as a result of that past. I agree completely and I am happy to say that I intend to deal with exactly those issues. My title, “How the Unity of Science Saved Alfred Tarski”, has two meanings: the first, quite literal. The second is less so and perhaps stretches the point, but it does bear on the question of “what happened.”
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References
Actually, the first of these papers, all of which appeared in Fundamenta Mathematicae,was published under the name Alfred Tajtelbaum.
Tarski Archives, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
Karl Popper, “Some Philosophical Comments on Tarski’s Theory of Truth”, in: Leon Henkin et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Tarski Symposium, Providence: American Mathematical Society 1974, pp. 397–409.
This is one of the most interesting documents in the Tarski Archives, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
There are two spellings for Tarski’s original name: Teitelbaum was the German way and Tajtelbaum, the Polish. In Tarski’s documents one finds both spellings used rather indiscriminately.
According to Volker Peckhaus, from an unpublished interview on Sept. 16, 1992 with Jürgen von Kempski in which the latter reported that Lesniewski said that in insecure times one should choose a “Weltanschauung” and he had chosen the antisemitic one.
Cf. p.283 of Gerald Holton, “On the Vienna Circle in Exile: An Eyewitness Report”, in: Werner dePauli-Schimanovich et al.(eds.), The Foundational Debate,Dordrecht: Kluwer 1995, pp.269292.
From a personal interview of the author with Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, who recalled Hofstader’s outrage at Courant’s remark.
Gian-Carlo Rota, “The Lost Café”, in: Necia Grant Cooper (ed.), From Cardinals to Chaos. Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Stanislaw Ulam, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1989, pp. 23–32.
Originally, Ernest Nagel had been chairman but at the last minute he was unable to attend the meeting because his mother took seriously ill. Tarski, who was vice-chairman of the organizing committee, then took over.
From the Preface to Ernest Nagel et al. (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Proceedings of the 1960 International Congress. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1962.
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Feferman, A.B. (1999). How the Unity of Science Saved Alfred Tarski. In: Woleński, J., Köhler, E. (eds) Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1998], vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0689-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0689-6_4
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