Thursday, January 29, 2015

SELF-JUSTIFYING POSTSCRIPT

In the Fall of 1951 [yes, really sixty-four years ago -- that is not a typo] I took Willard van Orman Quine's graduate Math 280 course at Harvard, "Mathematical Logic."  We used as a text his book by the same name.  One of the other undergraduates in the course was Ralph Krause, a very smart young man.  Ralph found an error in the book and called it to Quine's attention.  Quine was very grateful, and corrected it in the next edition with a footnote acknowledgement to Krause.

Now, when it comes to all things formal, I am not fit to carry Quine's briefcase, and that is not modesty or hyperbole, just the plain truth.  So I figure, if it can happen to Quine ...

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