Editorial Note

This issue ofSyntheseoriginated from a symposium on ‘Gödel’s General Philosophical Significance’ that was held under the auspices of the Boston Colloquium in Philosophy and History of Science on February 6– 7th, 1995. Our initial purpose was simply to publish the proceedings of that symposium. Alas, the project turned out to be ill-fated to the extreme. Of the ten speakers, three have died and a fourth has been seriously ill. This led us to solicit contributions from other sources. We have, in fact, been so successful that instead of one special issue we are publishing two. Of the papers included in this issue, those by Dawson and Hintikka originated from the 1995 meeting, but the rest are new. We are grateful to all our contributors for their interest in our special issue, which should be construed in the first place as a testimony to their interest in Gödel’s thought. We dedicate this number and its sequel to the memory of Hao Wang, George Boolos and Thomas Tymoczko, who were among the participants of the 1995 Symposium.