A note on Hao Wang’s “A Logical Journey: From Godel to Philosophy”

Since I penned “G-torr, the anti J-zeus” I have been preoccupied by the power of psychologism, due to life events. I have been reading the Wang text for a while and wondered what Godel thought about psychologism. Searching the index I found one entry on, “Psychologism, 77” which discusses Godel’s outline for a proof of Platonism. By refuting the Creation view, Psychologism, and Aristotelian realism, Godel speculated it was possible to prove the Platonic view of mathematics. 

For me this is indicative that Godel instinctively denied the semantic implications of Incompleteness and Undecidability, but the problem was cross referencing “Aristotelian realism,” since the current context didn’t touch on it or “Psychologism.” Again the index refers to “Aristotelian realism (in Mathematics), 77, 223” and when you go to page 223 there is another iteration not just of Aristotelian realism, but Psychologism with no discourse about their semantics.

My intuition is lead to wonder what would cause the subjects of Psychologism and Aristotelian realism be divided by 146 pages of text and only a nominal indication that they are relevant to the topic at hand. Which lead me to think about Platonism and a form of eastern thought that is strongly associated with it, i.e. Chinese thought in general.

Now it is entirely possible to let the incomplete index on the second instance of “Psychologism” slip by without a trace of suspicion, however, what about no semantic discourse on their relevance? Perhaps I should thank Strauss for his work on esotericism and the use of indices to throw you off the trace, unless you devote the whole text to a complete analysis. But then, that would make this a political text and not a text on Formal Science.