The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle
constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his
influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those
on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this
topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is
mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's
definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others
analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include
Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga.
Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and
Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on
Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the
United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the
University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis
involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow
syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated
but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the
interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and
proof and on the nature of metalanguages.
The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews
and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan
Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini
reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover
recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic
approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner.
