Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle - Jan Wolenski

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 Gdel. 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, Wjcicki, 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 Gdel 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
Gdel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in
Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on
Gdel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on
Mauthner.