HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Kenneth Jon Barwise (; June 29, 1942 – March 5, 2000) was an American
mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...
,
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and logician who proposed some fundamental revisions to the way that
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from prem ...
is understood and used.


Education and career

Born in
Independence, Missouri Independence is the fifth-largest city in Missouri and the county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson County. Independence is a satellite city of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro ...
to Kenneth T. and Evelyn Barwise, Jon was a precocious child. A pupil of
Solomon Feferman Solomon Feferman (December 13, 1928 – July 26, 2016) was an American philosopher and mathematician who worked in mathematical logic. Life Solomon Feferman was born in The Bronx in New York City to working-class parents who had immigrated to th ...
at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, Barwise started his research in infinitary logic. After positions as assistant professor at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
and the University of
Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
, during which time his interests turned to
natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
, he returned to Stanford in 1983 to direct the Center for the Study of Language and Information. He began teaching at
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...
in 1990. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 1999. In his last year, Barwise was invited to give the 2000
Gödel Lecture The Gödel Lecture is an honor in mathematical logic given by the Association for Symbolic Logic, associated with an annual lecture at the association's general meeting. The award is named after Kurt Gödel and has been given annually since 1990. ...
; he died prior to the lecture.


Philosophical and logical work

Barwise contended that, by being explicit about the context in which a
proposition In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
is made, the ''
situation Situation and its derivations may refer to: Situation Common uses *A concept similar to scenario, relating to a position (location) or a set of circumstances. *A job People * ''The Situation'' (TV personality), nickname of American reality TV p ...
'', many problems in the application of logic can be eliminated. He sought ''... to understand meaning and inference within a general theory of information, one that takes us outside the realm of sentences and relations between sentences of any language, natural or formal.'' In particular, he claimed that such an approach resolved the liar paradox. He made use of Peter Aczel's
non-well-founded set theory Non-well-founded set theories are variants of axiomatic set theory that allow sets to be elements of themselves and otherwise violate the rule of well-foundedness. In non-well-founded set theories, the foundation axiom of ZFC is replaced by axio ...
in understanding "
vicious circle A vicious circle (or cycle) is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with detrimental results. It is a system with no tendency toward equilibrium (social, economic, ecological, etc.), at least in the shor ...
s" of reasoning. Barwise, along with his former colleague at Stanford
John Etchemendy John W. Etchemendy (born 1952 in Reno, Nevada) is an American logician and philosopher who served as Stanford University's twelfth Provost. He succeeded John L. Hennessy to the post on September 1, 2000 and stepped down on January 31, 2017. E ...
, was the author of the popular logic textbook '' Language, Proof and Logic''. Unlike the ''
Handbook of Mathematical Logic A handbook is a type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference. The term originally applied to a small or portable book containing information useful for its owner, but the '' Oxford En ...
'', which was a survey of the state of the art of
mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of forma ...
circa 1975, and of which he was the editor, this work targeted elementary logic. The text is notable for including computer-aided homework problems, some of which provide visual representations of logical problems. During his time at Stanford, he was also the first Director of the
Symbolic Systems Program Symbolic may refer to: * Symbol, something that represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity Mathematics, logic, and computing * Symbolic computation, a scientific area concerned with computing with mathematical formulas * Symbolic dynam ...
, an interdepartmental degree program focusing on the relationships between cognition, language, logic, and computation. The K. Jon Barwise Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Symbolic Systems Program has been given periodically since 2001.


Selected publications

*Barwise, K. J. (1975) '' Admissible Sets and Structures. An Approach to Definability Theory'' *Barwise, K. J. & Perry, John (1983) ''Situations and Attitudes''. Cambridge: MIT Press. *Barwise, K. J. & Etchemendy, J. (1987) '' The Liar: An Essay in Truth and Circularity'' *Barwise, K. J. (1988) '' The Situation in Logic'' *Barwise, K. J. & Moss, L. (1996) '' Vicious Circles. On the Mathematics of Non-Wellfounded Phenomena'' *Barwise, K, J. & Seligman, J. (1997) '' Information Flow: the Logic of Distributed Systems'' *Barwise, K. J. & Etchemendy, J. (2002) '' Language, Proof and Logic'' *Barwise, K. J. Editor (1977) ''Handbook of Mathematical Logic''. xi+1165 pages *Barwise, J. & Feferman, S. Editors (1985) ''Model-Theoretic Logics''. x+893 pages


See also

* Barwise Prize * Barwise compactness theorem * Slingshot argument


References


External links


''In Memoriam'': Kenneth Jon Barwise by Solomon Feferman
''The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic'' vol. 6(4) Dec. 2000, pp505–8 (
PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...
) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barwise, Jon 1942 births 2000 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century essayists American logicians American male essayists American male non-fiction writers American philosophy academics Deaths from colorectal cancer Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Indiana University faculty Mathematical logicians Mathematicians from Missouri Philosophers of logic Philosophers of mathematics Philosophy writers Stanford University alumni Stanford University Department of Philosophy faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Writers from Independence, Missouri Yale University faculty 20th-century American male writers Gödel Lecturers