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Hans Hahn and the Foundational Debate

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The Foundational Debate

Part of the book series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1995] ((VCIY,volume 3))

Abstract

“I am not much given to emotions”, wrote the 30-years old mathematician Hans Hahn in 1909 to the physicist Paul Ehrenfest, who lived in St. Petersburg, “but to a friend who is as far away as you are, I confess it: sometimes, when I have attempted to dip into the metaphysics of Aristotle, I have felt awe-struck, and I much regret to lack the opportunities to ponder these things in depth, as I have pondered the calculus of variations.”1 In due course, however, Hahn managed to create those opportunities for philosophical studies for which he longed so much; and when he died some twenty-five years later, the physicist Philipp Frank could describe him as the true founder of the Vienna Circlet.2

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Notes

  1. Letter from Hahn to Ehrenfest dated Dec. 26, 1909, Ehrenfest archive, Boerhaave Museum, Leiden.

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  2. Philipp Frank, Obituary for Hans Hahn, Erkenntnis 4, 315–6.

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  3. Sir Karl Popper, in “Hans Hahn - Reminiscences of a Grateful Student”, Introduction to the Collected Works of Hans Hahn (ed. L. Schmetterer and K. Sigmund), Vol. 1, Springer Verlag, Vienna (1995)

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  4. Karl Menger: Selected Papers in Logic and Foundations, Didactics, Economics, Vienna Circle Collection, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1994), p. 284.

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  5. Personal File of Kurt Gödel, Archives of the Philosophical Faculty, University of Vienna.

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  6. Postcard from Hahn to Ehrenfest dated Dec. 8, 1932, Ehrenfest archive.

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  7. see note 1.

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  8. Letter from Hahn to Ehrenfest dated March 30, 1912, Ehrenfest archive.

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  9. H. Hahn, Diskussion zur Grundlegung der Mathematik, Erkenntnis 2, p.135–141, translated in H. Hahn, Empiricism, Logic and Mathematics, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1980), p. 32.

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  10. see note 9, op.cit. p.31

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  12. op.cit. note 3.

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  13. H. Hahn, “Überflüssige Wesenheiten (Occams Rasiermesser)”, in Veröffentlichungen des Vereines Ernst Mach, Verlag Artur Wolf, Wien (1930). Translated in H. Hahn, Empiricism, Logic and Mathematics, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1980).

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  14. see op.cit. note 13, p. 3–4.

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  18. See Friedrich Stadler, Introduction to Richard von Mises Kleines Lehrbuch des Positivismus Suhrkamp, 1990 .

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  23. op.cit. note 1.

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  27. see the biography of Kurt Reidemeister by F. Bachmann, H. Behnke and W. Franz in Math. Annalen 199 1–11.

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Authors
  1. Karl Sigmund
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vienna, Austria

    Werner Depauli-Schimanovich  & Eckehart Köhler  & 

  2. Institut ‘Wiener Kreis’, Vienna, Austria

    Friedrich Stadler

  3. University of Vienna, Austria

    Friedrich Stadler

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Sigmund, K. (1995). Hans Hahn and the Foundational Debate. In: Depauli-Schimanovich, W., Köhler, E., Stadler, F. (eds) The Foundational Debate. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook [1995], vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3327-4_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3327-4_18

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