Cantor and Godel stride into the ring

Existential Comics, a very philosophy-literate humor website that I'm pretty sure I've invoked here before, has a funny item up about Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege.

You can read it and behold it yourself here: www.existentialcomic.com/613.

The gist of it is that Frege and Russell are portrayed as boxers, engaged in a championship match to become THE defining philosopher of a logicist foundationalism about mathematics. During the actual "bout" on this subject, Frege famously said "arithmetic totters!"

At any rate, in the comic version of it, Russell and Frege are portrayed as both knocked out and flat on their respective backs at the end. I gather the point is that logicism, as to the philosophy of mathematics, tottered.

And after, as folks like the barber who shaved every man in town looked on from the audience, I imagine (the comic does not go this far) that Cantor and Godel strode into the ring, bent upon developing a humbler conception of both mathematics and logic as necessarily limited in their reach.

And with that simple reflection I have launched "philosophy week" at Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed. Given the title of this blog, you might not think it would need a special devoted "philosophy week". But with my mind always wandering (in the Jamesian spirit, I like to think) over politics, poetry, pop culture, science, history and everything else, the realm of abstract philosophy -- metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ends up somewhat neglected. This week will somewhat redress the balance.

Tune in tomorrow for a thought on the great pagan neoplatonist, Plotinus.

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