Re: [FOM] Gödel's Theorem & Hilbert, etc.

[T.Forster@dpmms.cam.ac.uk]

> (2) I would also enjoy comments about personal reactions (your own or 
> anyone else's) to Gödel's theorem, with special emphasis on similarities 
> to or differences from the sense of anomaly that Hilbert must have 
> experienced.

  I wondered about this too, and when i met Quine i asked him: after all by 
then he was probably the only surviving working logician who was of the age 
of responsibility when this happened. Surely you remember the shock of the 
discovery, who told you and where you were..? Interestingly he couldn't: he 
said he could remember where he was when he was told of Kennedy's murder, 
but he didn't remember who told him of the incompleteness theorem or what 
his reaction was. Some things become striking and memorable only in 
hindsight.

       tf