|
|
Article: Hintikka's alternatives.(Jaakko Hintikka)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue
- Article date:
- June 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Otago Polytechnic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
INTRODUCTION
for more than 50 years a lugubrious Finnish logician, Jaakko Hintikka, has been exploring the terra incognita of logic and philosophy, often the first to discover a new species of insight but not often feted for his discoveries in the comfortable salons where armchair intellectuals hold forth. Having published in 1955 an ingenious method for performing proofs by frustrated countermodel constructions, an idea discovered simultaneously by the Dutch logician Evert Willem Beth, Hintikka has lived to see recent books attribute the technique to the American logician Raymond Smullyan, who rediscovered it several years later. Again, in 1957 Hintikka ...