This second volume of a comprehensive edition of Kurt Godel's works collects the remainder of his published work, covering the period 1938-1974. (Volume I included all of his publications from 1929-1936). Each article or closely related group of articles is preceded by an introductory note that elucidates it and places it in historical context.
Kurt Godel was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century, famous for his work on the completeness of logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency of the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis. He is also noted for his work on constructivity, the decision
problem, and the foundations of computation theory, as well as for the strong individuality of his writings on the philosophy of mathematics. Less well-known is his discovery of unusual cosmological models for Einstein's equations, permitting "time-travel" into the past.
This second volume of a comprehensive edition of Godel's works collects together all his publications from 1938 to 1974. Together with Volume I (Publications 1929-1936), it makes available for the first time in a single source all of his previously published work. Continuing the format
established in the earlier volume, the present text includes introductory notes that provide extensive explanatory and historical commentary on each of the papers, a facing English translation of the one German original, and a complete bibliography. Succeeding volumes are to contain unpublished
manuscripts, lectures, correspondence, and extracts from the notebooks.
Collected Works is designed to be accessible and useful to as wide an audience as possible without sacrificing scientific or historical accuracy. The only complete edition available in English, it will be an essential part of the working library of professionals and students in logic,
mathematics, philosophy, history of science, and computer science. These volumes will also interest scientists and all others who wish to be acquainted with one of the great minds of thetwentieth century.
This is the second volume of this impressive series of Gödel's works ... this second volume of his published works is really fundamental, as it was only in this period that Gödel decided to make public some traits of his philosophical position ... The introductory note to these writings, by R. Solovay, seems to me historically and technically superb. I congratulate the editorial team for including in this volume the improved 1972 version of the Dialectica paper of 1958 on finitary mathematics ... As a whole, the book is absolutely indispensable for anyone interested in Gödel's ideas, or generally on the history and philosophy of logic and mathematics.
