Putnam's Review of Gödel's Proof

Extract

In his review of our Gödel's Proof in the April 1960 issue of Philosophy of Science Professor Hilary Putnam severely criticizes the crucial chapter, in which we attempt to make intelligible to the non-specialist the general character of the argument for Gödel's main conclusions. Indeed, he asserts that “the chapter culminates in an extremely serious misstatement,” and that we “fail to give the proof that G [the Gödel sentence upon which the argument hinges] is not provable.” “The book,” he declares, “has thus a serious shortcoming (in a very literal sense of ‘shortcoming’: it comes right up to the heart of Gödel's argument and then stops short with a misstatement')” (p. 205). These assertions impugn the competence of our exposition of Gödel's achievements, and we therefore ask for the privilege of replying to Dr. Putnam's allegations.