Comments on: Saul Kripke http://www.arsmathematica.net/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/ Dedicated to the mathematical arts. Fri, 29 May 2015 09:17:44 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 By: PeterMcB http://www.arsmathematica.net/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-586 Mon, 15 May 2006 17:12:30 +0000 http://www.arsmathematica.net/archives/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-586 Perhaps because he published while still in high-school, Kripke’s name got attached to the idea of possible-worlds semantics for modal logic. But there are quite a few others who came up with the idea around the same time: Jaako Hintikka (work published in 1962 but completed much earlier), Stig Kanger (published 1957), Carew Meredith and Arthur Prior (unpublished 1956), and Charles Hamblin (PhD completed in 1956). At the same time, Hugh Everett completed a PhD in physics at Princeton (1956) in which he introduced the idea of possible worlds to physics. One wonders if there was something “in the air” at the time. I have speculated in the past that the Cold War made people consider alternative possible political systems, and this led them to think of the idea of possible worlds.

]]> By: Walt http://www.arsmathematica.net/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-585 Mon, 15 May 2006 02:31:53 +0000 http://www.arsmathematica.net/archives/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-585 Just for you, sigfpe. Everyone else will have to wonder what the puzzle was…

Now, that you mention it, I think I made the same mistake about Putnam, but a long time ago. I knew he was a philosopher, but I originally didn’t know he was prominent for anything other than his work on Hilbert’s 10th Problem.

]]> By: Kenny http://www.arsmathematica.net/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-584 Mon, 15 May 2006 02:02:38 +0000 http://www.arsmathematica.net/archives/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-584 One might easily make the same mistake about Hilary Putnam, if one only knows the name from the Davis-Putnam-Robinson-Matiyasevitch resolution of Hilbert’s 10th Problem!

]]> By: sigfpe http://www.arsmathematica.net/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-583 Mon, 15 May 2006 01:23:38 +0000 http://www.arsmathematica.net/archives/2006/05/13/saul-kripke/#comment-583 Genius! Dropping the crucial word “no” from your sentence and turning your posting into a challenging logic puzzle!

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