[FOM] Reply to Putnam 2

[Harvey Friedman]

On Jun 19, 2009, at 7:00 PM, Timothy Y. Chow wrote:

> Harvey Friedman wrote:
>
>> In fact, when I first met Hilary in Fall, 1964, as a first semester
>> freshman at MIT, I was focused on the circularities in logic, and  
>> asked,
>> innocently, "how does logic start?"  Hilary said that he didn't have
>> anything like a complete answer to this question, but rightly gave me
>> references to a couple of books that do the basic setup with much  
>> more
>> care than normal.
>
> Which references were these?

If my recollection serves me well, they are

Smullyan, Theory of Formal Systems

Rosenbloom, The Elements of Mathematical Logic

Of course, I was not satisfied that all circularities were removed.  
Fortunately I was willing to continue with the Mendelson book that  
Hartley Rogers was using in Fall 1964 (when I arrived at MIT),  
circularities notwithstanding.

Harvey Friedman