There are obvious names that you expect to appear in a book like this: Einstein in the physics chapters, Gödel on formal systems, and so on. But the name that comes up more than any other is … Ayn Rand? And for no very obvious reason? I suspected that the author lost a drunken bet to mention Ayn Rand in every chapter or something, and I think a sharper editor would have cut it out. But maybe objectivism has profound and useful things to say in this space
Yes , it has something to say:
There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be.
Cook keeps mentioning Rand because he is trying to confirm something she held to be true.
In more detail, Objectivists hold that
logic and maths are about empirical reality , not independent magisteria
Rand has certain apriori knowledge that there are no contradictions in reality
therefore, there should be no contradiction-implying paradoxes in logic or maths.
Yes , it has something to say:
Cook keeps mentioning Rand because he is trying to confirm something she held to be true.
In more detail, Objectivists hold that
logic and maths are about empirical reality , not independent magisteria
Rand has certain apriori knowledge that there are no contradictions in reality
therefore, there should be no contradiction-implying paradoxes in logic or maths.