5 Nov
2025
5 Nov
'25
11:09 a.m.
Institute Vienna Circle fellow Richard Zach is giving a talk at the Department of
Mathematics, University of Vienna:
Semantics of First-order Logic: The Early Years
Logic Colloquium | 06.11.2025 15:00 - 15:50
R. Zach (U Calgary, CA)
The model and proof theory of classical first-order logic are a staple of introductory
logic courses: we have nice proof systems, well-understood notions of models, validity,
and consequence, and a proof of completeness. The story of how these were developed in the
1920s, 30s, and even 40s usually consists in simply a list of results and who obtained
them when. What happened behind the scenes is much less well known. The talk will fill in
some of that back story and show how philosophical, methodological, and practical
considerations shaped the development of the conceptual framework and the direction of
research in these formative decades. Specifically, I'll discuss how the work of
Hilbert and his students (Behmann, Schönfinkel, Bernays, and Ackermann) on the decision
problem in the 1920s led from an almost entirely syntactic approach to logic to the
development of first-order semantics that made the completeness theorem possible.
Organiser:
KGRC
Location:
Department of Mathematics, HS 11, 2. OG, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1