Phenomenological-semantic investigations into incompleteness

Olav K. Wiegand

pp. 101-132

in: Olav K. Wiegand, Robert J. Dostal, Lester Embree, Joseph Kockelmans, Mohanty (eds), Phenomenology on Kant, German idealism, hermeneutics and logic, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstract

When today the phenomenologist surveys the history of the philosophical comprehension of Gödel's theorems, he is confronted with the realization that the decisive publications come almost exclusively from the sphere of analytic philosophy.¹ But does phenomenology in the spirit of Husserl not mean to keep in step with the epochal results of the special sciences by working on the phenomenological understanding of them? Phenomenological research of this kind means the same as development of phenomenological theory of science (Wissenschaftstheorie). In connection with the incompleteness theorems, the latter would be confronted with fundamental questions such as, "To what extent can mathematical thought be analyzed in formal terms?"; "What, seen in the light of Gödel's theorems, might be the difference at all between mathematical thought and logic?"; or, How is the bringing about of mathematical truth to be distinguished from bringing about a mathematical proof?"

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund