The Transfiguration of Logic: Wittgenstein to Gödel

Jan von Plato | University of Helsinki

Zusammen mit Vienna Circle Society/Together with Vienna Circle Society
Date: October 19, 2026
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Aula am Campus der Universität Wien, Hof 1, Eingang 1.11, Spitalgasse 2-4, 1090 Wien

YouTube Livestream:

https://youtube.com/live/L7I57U4GSv8?feature=share

As part of the conference 

The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Research and Historiography

October 19-21, 2026

University of Vienna – Aula at Campus

Organized by:

Vienna Circle Society and Institute Vienna Circle

https://viennacircle-today.univie.ac.at/

Abstract

Modern logic began with Frege, Peano, and Russell. Wittgenstein's Tractatus made it a cornerstone of a particular philosophy of logical atomism that greatly influenced the founders of logical empiricism. Viennese mathematicians and philosophers around 1925 were keenly interested in the new logic, including Kurt Gödel's teachers Hans Hahn and Moritz Schlick, whose seminars the fresh physics student of 1924 attended. In 1928, the newly appointed Privatdozent Rudolf Carnap held a course "Axiomatik-Übungen" (Exercises in axiomatics), with Gödel among the participants. Provoked by Carnap's exercises, Gödel singularly transformed the world of logic with his completeness and incompleteness theorems. The details of these years of transfiguration of modern logic in Vienna have been unveiled only recently, through the transcription of Gödel's preserved shorthand notes of the time. These developments are described with illustrations from the original notes and other contemporary sources.

Short bio

Jan von Plato has a long career as a logician with proof theory and constructive mathematics as a specialization. He is also an expert on the history of exact science and logic. His publications include works in proof theory and the development of logic, as well as over ten books, among them Structural Proof Theory (with Sara Negri), Saved from the Cellar: Gerhard Gentzen's Shorthand  Notes on Logic and Foundations of Mathematics, and Can Mathematics Be Proved Consistent? Gödel's Shorthand Notes & Lectures on Incompleteness. He is currently leading a second ERC Advanced Grant Project at the University of Helsinki that explores the shorthand notes of Gödel, Gentzen, and Paul Bernays.