[FOM] Tarski biography

Alasdair Urquhart urquhart at cs.toronto.edu
Tue Oct 19 06:49:54 EDT 2004


I've just finished reading the new Tarski biography,
and I can only say that anyone interested in the history of
twentieth century logic should get their copy as soon as
they can.  I couldn't put it down after I started reading it.

I knew a lot of details of Tarski's life already,
but most of this book was a complete revelation to me.
Students of Tarski's famous article on truth will enjoy the 
story (p. 271) of the lewd annotations that the avant-garde
artist and playwright Witkiewicz made on his copy of 
that famous work, connecting metalanguage
with oral sex (the words for "tongue" and "language"
are interchangeable in Polish).






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