|||| Godel and The American Constitution

There has been much talk of Godel's comment on the American Constitution as reflected in many blogs. There are two points that need to be made clear to those outside Logic and Mathematics. These points are referred to in the following comment on Jeffery Kegler's postings on the same topic. (http://jeffreykegler.blogspot.com/2008/11/kurt-gdel-contradiction-in-us.html)

1. Godel was primarily a Logician and philosopher of Mathematics and its Foundation. He was a theoretician of the highest order. It was Godel who proved the limitations of Russell's monumental work, Pricipia Mathematica.

2. For Godel, Mathematical Logic and Philosophy were not merely abstract subject-matter but fields of study that were applicable to the real-world.

Logic and Reasoning are together central to Philosophy. And, Philosophy is highly general sort of account of the world on an abstract level. There are no limitations on the range of Philosophy's interest. It is from this stance, as it were, dual but one, perspective that Godel would have viewed the American Constitution.

It is, in a way, an old-fashioned sort of way to look at the world, but, that way will never disappear from out modes of understanding the world. Philosophy is close to us, even it we don't know it.

Here is a copy of my post on his blogspot.

"Thanks for your blog on Godel and the American Constitution. I think your contribution is valuable in giving a context to Godel's legal thinking on the subject. We may say, with Wittgenstein, that Godel was a human being before he was a logician. But, Godel would have used the word "prove" in the quoted dialogue as a logician. The consequences of the American Constitution within practical reason is thus to be found in the history of the creation of that marvelous document. The consequences within theoretical reason is the province of the theory of logic in which Godel himself was among the finest ever. It would have been irresistible for Godel not to view it in this theoretical setting."