From Hilbert’s Program to Carnap’s Wissenschaftslogik

Georg Schiemer (University of Vienna)

The next session of the Reconstructing Carnap Webinar Series will take place on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

Speaker: Georg Schiemer (University of Vienna)
Title: From Hilbert’s Program to Carnap’s Wissenschaftslogik

Time: March 20, 2025 —4:30 PM to 6:30 PM CET (10:30 AM to 12:30 PM EST)
Link: meet.google.com/uaq-jqpf-mwr

From Hilbert’s Program to Carnap’s Wissenschaftslogik

By Georg Schiemer, University of Vienna

The talk will focus on several points of contact between David Hilbert's logical work and Rudolf Carnap’s early contributions to the logical reconstruction of mathematical and scientific theories until the publication of Carnap’s monograph Foundations of Logic and Mathematics in 1939. The comparison between Hilbert and Carnap will focus on two interpretative points: first, the extent to which Carnap’s own project on "general axiomatics" from the 1920s with its focus on metatheoretical properties of axiomatic theories was motivated by Hilbert’s foundational work. Second, the talk will analyze to what extent Carnap’s later views on theoretical languages, in particular, on the status of theoretical terms in science, were directly influenced by Hilbert’s instrumental formalism about logic and mathematics.