Abstract

this article I will be looking at the leading question from the point of view of the logician, and for a substantial part of that, from the perspective of one supremely important logician: Kurt Godel. From the time of his stunning incompleteness results in 1931 to the end of his life, Godel called for the pursuit of new axioms to settle undecided arithmetical problems. And from 1947 on, with the publication of his unusual article, "What is Cantor's continuum problem?" [11], he called in addition for the pursuit of new axioms to settle Cantor's famous conjecture about the cardinal number of the continuum. In both cases, he pointed primarily to schemes of higher infinity in set theory as the direction in which to seek these new principles. Logicians have learned a great deal in recent years that is relevant to Godel's program, but there is considerable disagreement about what conclusions to draw from their results. I'm far from unbiased in this respect, and you'll see how I come out on these matters by the end of this essay, but I will try to give you a fair presentation of other positions along the way so you can decide for yourself which you favor.

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