"For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal"
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Kleene is doing that mathematician’s trick of understatement that lands like a quiet punch: “rather logical for mathematicians” is both compliment and gentle ribbing, a nod to how even the most rigorous minds can end up siloed by taste, training, and professional dialect. The line isn’t about logic as an abstract ideal; it’s about logic as a social technology, something that needs institutions to become a living field rather than a set of scattered insights.
The context matters. Mid-century American logic was coalescing out of philosophy, mathematics, and emerging computer science. Different camps were solving adjacent problems while speaking mutually unintelligible languages: philosophers with conceptual arguments and modal intuitions; mathematicians with proofs, formal systems, and an allergy to what they’d call “hand-waving.” Kleene’s wink is that being “interested in logic” wasn’t enough to create a community. You needed infrastructure.
That’s where the ASL (Association for Symbolic Logic) enters as the real protagonist. Kleene foregrounds the mundane mechanisms that actually build intellectual revolutions: conferences, shared standards, peer review, a common journal. The subtext is almost political. Knowledge doesn’t win by being correct; it wins by being organized. A journal isn’t just a place to publish; it’s a boundary-making device that tells people what counts as an argument, what counts as a result, and who counts as “us.”
In a field obsessed with formal language, Kleene is bluntly honest about the informal glue that makes formality possible.
The context matters. Mid-century American logic was coalescing out of philosophy, mathematics, and emerging computer science. Different camps were solving adjacent problems while speaking mutually unintelligible languages: philosophers with conceptual arguments and modal intuitions; mathematicians with proofs, formal systems, and an allergy to what they’d call “hand-waving.” Kleene’s wink is that being “interested in logic” wasn’t enough to create a community. You needed infrastructure.
That’s where the ASL (Association for Symbolic Logic) enters as the real protagonist. Kleene foregrounds the mundane mechanisms that actually build intellectual revolutions: conferences, shared standards, peer review, a common journal. The subtext is almost political. Knowledge doesn’t win by being correct; it wins by being organized. A journal isn’t just a place to publish; it’s a boundary-making device that tells people what counts as an argument, what counts as a result, and who counts as “us.”
In a field obsessed with formal language, Kleene is bluntly honest about the informal glue that makes formality possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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