[FOM] Did G?del's result come as a surprise to Bertrand Russell?

[Alasdair Urquhart]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Charles Silver wrote:

> 	Please someone correct this approximate quote from Russell <<After
> the arduousness of finishing the Principia, I was afterwards not
> capable of serious mathematical thought>>.  I know my quotation from
> Russell is incorrect and could not find it on the net.

"I always found myself hoping that Principia Mathematica would be finished
some day.  Moreover the difficulties appeared to me in the nature of a
challenge, which it would be pusillanimous not to meet and overcome.
So I persisted, and in the end the work was finished, but my intellect
never quite recovered from the strain.  I have been ever since
definitely less capable of dealing with difficult abstractions
than I was before."

 			Bertrand Russell
 			Autobiograpy, Volume 1
 			George Allen and Unwin, 1967
 			Pages 152-153.