Question I have been reading discussions on this site about the Principia and about Godel's incompleteness theorem. I would really like to understand what you guys are talking about; it seems endlessly fascinating. I was an English/history major, though, and avoided math whenever I could. Consequently I have never even taken a semester of calculus. The good news (from my perspective) is that I have nothing to do for the rest of my life except for working toward the fulfillment of this one goal I have: to plow through the literature of the Frankfurt School and make sense of it all. Understanding the methods and arguments of logicians would seem to provide a strong context for the worldview that inspired Horkheimer, Fromm, et al. So yeah, where should I start? Do I need to get a book on the fundamentals of arithmetic? Algebra? Geometry? Or do books on elementary logic do a good job explaining the mathematics necessary for understanding the material? As I said, I'm not looking for a quick solution. I have plenty of time on my hand. So, any advice would be awesome. Thanks.

Accepted:
October 14, 2010

Comments

lucky you, with so much time on your hands and with such interesting interests!

there are numerous secondary expositions of Godel etc. -- I personally love Douglas Hofstadter's way of explaining it (in Godel Escher Bach and also his more recent Strange Loops) ... but Rebecca Goldstein has a recent book on it (haven't read it, can't speak to its quality) -- http://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/books/incompleteness/index.html

good luck

1. I don't think there is any reason to suppose that learning about mathematical logic from Principia to Gödel will be any help at all in understanding what is going on with the Frankfurt School. (The only tenuous connection I can think of is that the logical positivists were influenced by developments in logic, and the Frankfurt School were concerned inter alia to give a critique of positivism. But since neither the authors of Principia nor Gödel were positivists, it would be better to read some of the positivists themselves if you want to know what the Frankfurt School were reacting against).

2. Of course, I think finding out a bit about mathematical logic is fun for its own sake: but it is mathematics and to really understand I'm afraid there is not much for it other than working through some increasingly tough books called the likes of "An Introduction to Logic" followed by "Intermediate Logic" and then "Mathematical Logic". Still, you can get a distant impression of what's going on by following links on Wikipedia etc. And on Gödelian matters, Hofstadter's long book is entertainingly illuminating and somewhat annoying in about equal measure. Goldstein's book, though, is hopeless as a guide: see http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/lrb.pdf for an authoritative demolition (which indeed pulls its punches). If I was going to recommend one book on Gödel as a way in for the non-mathematical, it would be Torkel Franzen's Gödel's Theorem, an Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse.