Solomon Feferman: Lieber Herr Bernays! Lieber Herr Gödel!

Abstract

Kurt Gödel and Paul Bernays enjoyed a warm, long personal relationship, and the correspondence between them is one of the most extensive in the volumes of Gödel's Collected Works (V and VI) devoted to his scientific exchanges. It deals with a rich body of logical and philosophical issues, including the incompleteness theorems, the limits of finitism, constructivity, set theory, the philosophy of mathematics, and post-Kantian philosophy. Drawing on both the correspondence and other sources, the lecture will concentrate on the first two of these as well as touch on the rest.