28/42 [No Music Version] Kurt Gödel: Modern Dvmt of the Foundations Of Math In Light Of Philosophy
Channel: GaryGeckDotCom
Date: 2011-08-02

http://garygeck.com/?page_id=42 for an mp3 this video for your iPod. 

This is a version without a musical soundtrack for those who For the original version with a soundtrack please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG7MyZtGSB0

Hello, this is Gary Geck of Gary Geck.com. Kurt Gödel has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle and A Genius at odds with the Zeitgeist.

The following is my reading of Kurt Gödel's 1961 lecture called "The modern Development Of The Foundations Of Mathematics In The Light Of Philosophy". As was typical of Gödel's very private philosophical work, the lecture was never delivered. I now will read it in its entirety on youtube or in an mp3 (found at http://garygeck.com/?page_id=42).

It should become very clear that Gödel was a lone voice in his age of logical positivism, skepticism and analytical philosophy such as Harvard's Dr. Willard Quine's variety. Quine of course called the higher reaches of Set Theory mere mathematical recreation...a view clearly at odds with Gödel's. According to Dr. Richard Tieszen of San Jose University, "The three philosophers Gödel found most congenial to his own way of thinking were Plato, Leibniz and Husserl." In fact Gödel saw much of Western Thought as being on the wrong path since it had strayed from the influence of Leibniz in the 18th Century. It is surprising that Gödel promotes Kant (albeit in a modified form) with much enthusiasm in this lecture when Kant certainly helped to hasten the demise of Leibnizianism. Kant once called Plato' work 'babble'. 

On an interesting note "His few interests were in surrealist and abstract art, his favorite writers included Goethe and Franz Kafka, he enjoyed light classics and some 'pop' music and Disney films, especially Snow White." [source: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/kurt-godel/ ]