As the country becomes increasingly diverse, new issues arise within the American educational system. This book examines the effects of underrepresentation of African Americans in colleges and universities. It also discusses the challenges facing Blacks trying to get into the academy and issues that confront those who penetrate the system.

As the country becomes increasingly diverse, new issues arise within the American educational system. This book examines the effects of underrepresentation of African Americans in colleges and universities. It also discusses the challenges facing Blacks trying to get into the academy and issues that confront those who penetrate the system.

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive again only after (...) Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity, despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

Boundary crossings in academia are rarely addressed by university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty - student interactions. This study contributes to an understanding of undergraduate college student perceptions of appropriateness of faculty - student nonsexual interactions by investigating the influence of gender and ethnicity on student judgments of the appropriateness of numerous hypothetical interactions. Overall, students deemed the majority of interactions as inappropriate. Female students judged a number of interactions as more inappropriate than did male (...) students, and with a few exceptions, Mexican American and Anglo American students were similar in their ratings of the appropriateness of faculty - student interactions. These findings suggest that universities need to be proactive in establishing guidelines concerning faculty-student boundary crossings. (shrink)

The term postmodern is generally used to refer to current work in philosophy, literary criticism, and feminist thought inspired by Continental thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this book, Nancey Murphy appropriates the term to describe emerging patterns in Anglo-American thought and to indicate their radical break from the thought patterns of Enlightened modernity.The book examines the shift from modern to postmodern in three areas: epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics. Murphy contends that whole clusters of (...) terms in each of these disciplines have taken on new uses in the past fifty years and that these changes have radical consequences for all areas of academia, especially in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in studying academic dependency, towards the paradigm of brokered dependency. Using Chinese academia as an example, I demonstrate how the neocolonial condition of academic dependency is always mediated through blockage-brokerage mechanisms. The two most salient blockage-brokerage mechanisms of dependency in the Chinese context are linguistic barrier and authoritarian malepistemization, and the effects of the latter consist of three layers: institutional, informational and incorporational. On top of their domestic impacts, those mechanisms jointly exacerbate (...) spectacularized postcoloniality in anglophone-hegemonic global academic publishing. The paradigm of brokered dependency not only represents a more nuanced approach to the study of academic dependency, but also underscores the fact that the dismantling of the neocolonial condition cannot be conceived and pursued in isolation from comprehending and confronting the authoritarian condition, especially when the latter pertains under the disguise of anticolonialism. (shrink)

In this investigation we analyze, from the point of view of glottopolitics, the metalinguistics discourses published on “El Boletín” of the Chilean Academy of the Spanish Language between 1915 and 1931, the period of the institution’s reactivation. This phase has special significance because the Chilean Academy strives to reposition itself in the Chilean cultural field after a long recess in which relevant changes developed in the country. At the same time the hispanist cultural trend acts with great force, represented by (...) the Spanish Royal Academy and its American branches. Our frame of reference is historical glottopolitics, and our main analytical concept is language ideology. From this background we apply a discursive analysis oriented toward the contents of academic discourses published on the Academy’s official magazine in the already indicated period. Our conclusion is that the language ideology contained in the corpus corresponds in general terms to the standard language ideology but permeated by local specific context as well as global. (shrink)

In contrast to anti-Jewish campaigns at German universities in the 19th century, which met with opposition from liberal scholars, among them prominent chemists, there was no public reaction to the dismissals in 1933. Germany had been an international leader in chemistry until the 1930s. Due to a high proportion of Jewish physicists, chemistry was strongly affected by the expulsion of scientists. Organic and inorganic chemistry were least affected, while biochemistry suffered most. Polymer chemistry and quantum chemistry, of minor importance among (...) the majority of academic chemists was further weakened by the expulsion of renowned scientists. However, a look at the research carried out in Nazi Germany shows that no field of research "emigrated" as such, except research into molecular beams. The reception of emigré chemists differed with respect to their field of research and the degree of competition in the host countries. Thus biochemists and physical chemists were accepted at American universities, whereas organic chemists were not. In contrast, they received high positions in Turkey, Palestine/Israel, and Egypt. After WWII, few emigrés were asked to come back. The delay of the resumption of international contacts by German chemists contributed to the delay in rebuilding in particular German biochemistry, the physical chemistry of polymers, and physical organic chemistry. (shrink)

Sargonic Cuneiform Tablets in the Real Academia de la Historia: The Carl L. Lippmann Collection. By Manuel Molina. Catálogo del Gabinete de Antigüedades. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia and Ministerio de Cultura de la República de Iraq, 2014. Pp. 317, 337 plts.

American university globalization has increasingly targeted and been courted by authoritarian states. While the reasons for these partnerships are manifold—including the ease of top-down large-scale monetary investment, “knowledge economy” development strategies, social engineering programs, and other corporate and imperial entanglements—an overwhelming discourse has emerged around higher education initiatives in places like the Arabian Peninsula, China, Singapore, and Central Asia that juxtaposes liberalism with the illiberal, authoritarian contexts it is supposedly encountering within the framework of neoliberal globalization. Through a discussion (...) of American branch campuses in Qatar and the UAE, this article traces a more complex web of actors whose interests may include neoliberal and imperial inclinations but are not reducible to them. By focusing on the discursive framings of these branch campus initiatives, we show how the notion of “liberal education” operates as a global discourse of power through American branch campuses in the Arabian Peninsula and, by extension, other nondemocratic states around the world. Specifically, we argue that the very concept of “authoritarianism” is discursively produced in and through these university projects, and simultaneously builds an idealized narrative about the national self in the United States that erases existing and emerging inequalities—indeed, authoritarianisms—within the home spaces of American academia. (shrink)

: In contrast to anti-Jewish campaigns at German universities in the 19th century, which met with opposition from liberal scholars, among them prominent chemists, there was no public reaction to the dismissals in 1933. Germany had been an international leader in (bio-)chemistry until the 1930s. Due to a high proportion of Jewish physicists, (bio-)chemistry was strongly affected by the expulsion of scientists. Organic and inorganic chemistry were least affected, while biochemistry suffered most. Polymer chemistry and quantum chemistry, of minor importance (...) among the majority of academic chemists (despite pioneering work by German physicists) was further weakened by the expulsion of renowned scientists. However, a look at the research carried out in Nazi Germany shows that no field of research "emigrated" as such, except research into molecular beams. The reception of emigré (bio-)chemists differed with respect to their field of research and the degree of competition in the host countries. Thus biochemists and physical chemists were accepted at American universities, whereas organic chemists were not. In contrast, they received high positions in Turkey, Palestine/Israel, and Egypt. After WWII, few emigrés were asked to come back. The delay of the resumption of international contacts by German (bio-)chemists contributed to the delay in rebuilding in particular German biochemistry, the physical chemistry of polymers, and physical organic chemistry. (shrink)

Continuing his quest to bring American philosophy back to its roots, Bruce Wilshire connects the work of such thinkers as Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, and James with Native American beliefs and practices. His search is not for exact parallels, but rather for fundamental affinities between the equally "organismic" thought systems of indigenous peoples and classic American philosophers. Wilshire gives particular emphasis to the affinities between Black Elk’s view of the hoop of the world and Emerson’s notion of horizon, (...) and also between a shaman’s healing practices and James’s ideas of pure experience, willingness to believe, and a pluralistic universe. As these connections come into focus, the book shows how European phenomenology was inspired and influenced by the classic American philosophers, whose own work reveals the inspiration and influence of indigenous thought. Wilshire’s book also reveals how artificial are the walls that separate the sciences and the humanities in academia, and that separate Continental from Anglo-American thought within the single discipline of philosophy. (shrink)

Across Black Spaces gathers a diverse array of essays and interviews by American philosopher George Yancy. Within this multidisciplinary framework are a series of public intellectual essays that drew international media acclaim for their spotlight on vicious racial tensions in American academia and society at large.

Why are U.S. academics, even after tenure and promotion, so timid in their exercise of academic freedom? Part of the problem is institutional – academics are subject to a long probationary period under tight collegial control – but part of the problem is ideological. A hybrid of seventeenth-century British and nineteenth-century German ideals, U.S. academia – and the nation more generally – remains ambivalent toward the value of academic freedom, ultimately inhibiting an unequivocal endorsement. (Published Online February 8 2007).

El artículo recorre la obra de Rodolfo Kusch posicionando sus principales propuestas en la construcción de tres enfoques convergentes en su filosofía. El primer enfoque está relacionado con la fenomenología y la cultura. El segundo enfoque se refiere a la influencia de la antropología y el cuestionamiento por el símbolo. El tercer enfoque despliega una aproximación filosófico-política. Estos enfoques permiten introducir tres “horizontes de pregunta” principalmente relacionados con el método, con lo popular y con lo indígena, que son expuestos como (...) asuntos centrales en toda su obra. Estos “horizontes de pregunta” buscan comprender los alcances de la filosofía de Kusch y su contribución al pensamiento filosófico americano. This paper analyses the work of Rodolfo Kusch remarking his main philosophical proposals through three correlated perspectives. The first perspective refers to phenomenology and culture. The second focuses on the influence of anthropology and the problem of symbols. The third posits a political-philosophical approximation. These perspectives operate interdependently as the background for Kusch’s philosophy and allow us to introduce three “questioning horizons” related to the method, the popular and the indigenous as the central issues of his philosophical work. Thus, these “questioning horizons” build a platform to understand Kusch’s philosophy and his contribution to the Latin American philosophy. (shrink)

Tracing the history of American sociology since the Civil War, the authors of this important volume explain the field′s diversity, its lack of unifying paradigms, its broad, eclectic research agenda and its general weakness as an institutional force in either academia or the policy arena. They highlight the equivocal and often contradictory missions that sociologists prescribe for themselves and the variable nature of human, financial and intellectual resources available to the profession.

Bloom's now famous manifesto for the salvation of American academia ("Back to the classics!") is worthy of serious consideration. His appraisal of current trends, such as the tendency to move away from theoretical traditions and towards practical or technical degrees, is often penetrating. (A good example is his discussion of the MBA degree: the degree itself is unobjectionable; but the value modern society places on it is a reflection of the "values" of modern society -values which have a (...) destructive side to them.). (shrink)

Euro-American misrepresentations of the non-West in general, and in particular on Hinduism and ancient India, run deep and have far greater colonial connections than that have been exposed in academia. This book analyzes the psycho-social consequences that Indian American children face after they are exposed to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. The authors show that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse and the current school-textbook discourse. The very (...) parameters and coordinates on which James Mill constructed the discourse are the ones that are being used to describe Hinduism, Hindus, and ancient India in the textbooks currently. Consequently, this archaic and racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces in the Indian American children a psychological impact quite similar to what racism is known to produce: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon similar to racelessness where the children dissociate from the tradition and culture of their ancestors. This book argues that the current school textbook discourse on Hinduism and India needs to change so that the Indian American children do not become victims of overt and covert racism. For the change to occur, the first step is to recognize the overarching and pervasive influence of the colonial-racist discourse of James Mill on the textbooks. For the reconstruction of the discourse to take place, the first step is to engage in a through deconstruction, which is what the book attempts. (shrink)

Recent discussion, both in the academia-related popular media and in some professional academic venues, about the current state and role of mainstream Anglo-American analytic philosophy among the humanities, has revealed a certain uneasiness expressed by both champions of this approach and traditional adversaries of it regarding its perceived isolation from the other fields of humanities. The fiercer critics go as far as to claim that the image of this type of philosophizing in the contemporary world is one of (...) a discipline that is disconnected from reality, a veritable inbreeding academic cottage industry of empty scholasticism. Though I am unsympathetic to the critics who would question the very essence of how this kind of philosophy is pursued, myself being a representative of it, I nevertheless present some admittedly sketchy but, in my opinion, interesting and revealing statistical data on the evolution of several top journals of analytic philosophy over the last hundred years in terms of the style of papers that get published, which might also justify to some extent the above mentioned complaint against analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This book is a comparative study of the sociological theory of such founding American sociologists as Ward, Sumner, Keller, Giddings, Ross, Small, and Cooley. The work is divided into chapters such as the one on "Social Origins" in which the contributions of these sociologists are delineated and compared. Hinkle attempts to characterize the fundamental working assumptions of these men by relating their work to the materials of American history and to the structures of American society and (...) class='Hi'>academia around 1880-1915. Thus Hinkle claims that his book is "a contribution to the sociology of the history of sociological theory.". (shrink)

For the purposes of this monograph, "by a degree" is meant a degree of recursive unsolvability. A degree [script bold]m is said to be minimal if 0 is the unique degree less than [script bold]m. Each of the six chapters of this self-contained monograph is devoted to the proof of an existence theorem for minimal degrees.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition by Christopher H. Evans, and: Robust Liberalism: H. Richard Niebuhr and the Ethics of American Public Life by Timothy A. Beach-VerheyJames M. BrandtLiberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition Christopher H. Evans Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010. 207pp. $24.95Robust Liberalism: H. Richard Niebuhr and the Ethics of American Public Life Timothy A. Beach-Verhey Waco, (...) TX: Baylor University Press, 2011. 238pp. $49.95Christopher Evans’s Liberalism without Illusions and Timothy Beach-Verhey’s Robust Liberalism have much in common, although they do not mean the same thing when they refer to “liberalism.” Evans traces the trajectory of liberal Christianity or “liberal theology” from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present and suggests how it might renew itself. Beach-Verhey considers the political tradition of liberal democracy and how the radical monotheism of H. Richard Niebuhr can help form a “robust liberalism.” Both books attend to the present situation of public life in the United States and assert the need for theology that points emphatically to the God who is in and beyond history.Evans admits that liberal theology is difficult to define and that it includes significant diversity. One reason for its elusiveness is the “remarkable elasticity” (7) it has shown over time. Theological liberalism “supports critical engagement with both Christian traditions and contemporary intellectual resources” (6). In a way different from traditional theology, it “has been characterized by an affirmation of personal and collective experience, systemic social analysis and open theological inquiry” (6).At its best, liberal theology, appealing to Jesus’s ministry and especially his teaching of the reign of God, inspired people to believe they could make a difference in the here and now. And liberal theology did this without an uncritical endorsement of Western “progress.” In its heyday, liberal theology’s leaders were pulpiteers who spoke to both personal and social issues and commanded significant and loyal followings.From the pinnacle of its ecclesial and cultural significance in the mid-twentieth century, liberal theology has fallen to a low place. Evans argues that [End Page 190] this has happened because liberal theology has lost its congregational base and become isolated in academia and among denominational leaders. Liberal theology has been unable to sustain its vigor at a popular level. Meanwhile, after its seeming defeat in the 1930s, fundamentalism recast itself as evangelicalism, organized at the grassroots level, and developed popular theologies that resonated with large numbers of people. Much of evangelicalism has been held together by dispensationalism and its attention to the end times. Liberals deemed dispensationalism unworthy of response, but Evans argues that liberals’ failure to engage dispensationalism seriously is to their detriment. While liberals were right to reject dispensationalism’s literalism and pessimism, Evans recognizes that its appeal has been the way it holds biblical texts together with concrete historical events, and that it is a logical development of traditional Protestant insistence on the authority of scripture.Evans’s prescription for the rejuvenation of liberal Christianity includes a posture of exile, knowing that the larger culture will not care much about what liberals say or do. Liberals need to regain a connection with scripture and tradition, offer a compelling alternative to the conservative vision, and get in touch with the deepest yearnings and anxieties of people in the pew (and those not in the pew).Liberal theology has made significant contributions to church and society, not least its call for transformation of structures of oppression. Evans counsels that liberals today need to speak to social issues but avoid being too closely identified with them. He appeals to Reinhold Niebuhr’s claim that the pursuit of justice is important, but it is not what constitutes Christian identity. Liberal Christianity’s enduring legacy is its faith that God is at work in the world. Evans affirms that liberals must continue to function as the church and attend to the deepest truths of the tradition, not least this active hope in the living God.Evans’s book provides a broad overview of the liberal tradition and charts well its historical passage, its strengths, and its failings... (shrink)

ExcerptIn 2021, in the pages of this journal, I contended that a coalition of interests in the United States had coalesced in opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump and duly taken power through the vehicle of Joe Biden.1 This coalition includes the Democratic Party, corporate elites, the media, academia, and—the subject of the present article—the national security (natsec) state. In that earlier piece, I focused on particular components of this coalition: legacy and social media. I went on in (...) a subsequent Telos piece to examine another of its elements: the academy.2 These fractions all appear, however, to be relatively minor players. While I argue that the legacy media have staged a counterrevolution to seize back control of the public sphere, this exhausts their parochial, pecuniary agenda; beyond this, they are simply part of a wider activist liberal cause. Contemporary liberal activism is in turn ideologically rooted in ideas propagated by sectors of the academy and hegemonic within it, but this has not, on my analysis, empowered the academy so much as the forces that make it increasingly redundant. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo tiene por objetivo establecer las bases para una comprensión disciplinaria y epistemológica de la geopolítica, considerando su ubicación como campo de estudio y el principal debate entre la perspectiva clásica y crítica de la misma en América del Sur. En este sentido, se efectúa un abordaje histórico sobre la evolución de la geopolítica, decantando en la manera en cómo el conocimiento geopolítico se ha dado en la región mencionada, al tiempo que se señalan las dificultades y propuestas (...) de investigación en el campo señalado. Se concluye que una discusión epistemológica de la geopolítica no solamente ayudará a lograr una mejor construcción y entendimiento del conocimiento geopolítico, desde un punto de vista holístico, sino que ayudará a destacar el rol de la academia en la necesidad de ser el eje articulador de dicha discusión.: This article aims to establish the basis for a disciplinary and epistemological understanding of geopolitics, considering its location as a field of study and the main debate between the classical and critical perspective in South America. In this sense, a historical approach is made on the evolution of geopolitics, decanting in the way in which geopolitical knowledge has been given in the region while pointing out the difficulties and research proposals in the field. It concludes that an epistemological discussion of geopolitics will not only help to achieve a better construction and understanding of geopolitical knowledge, from a holistic point of view, but also highlight the role of academics to articulate the discussion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary HistoryC. S. SchreinerThe Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History, by Susan Howe; 189 pp. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1993, $40.00.In the interview which concludes The Birth-Mark, Susan Howe says that during childhood her Boston household was visited by such pioneers of American studies as Perry Miller and F. O. Matthiessen. Career-wise, however, Howe’s path to (...) academia has be en indirect: born in 1937, she gained her first professorship in 1989 in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. A visual artist by [End Page 192] training, Howe veered into a genre of writing in the 1970s that seeks to “install certain narrativ es somewhere between history, mystic speech, and poetry” (p. 44). Her poetry includes Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978), Pythagorean Silence (1982), and Defenestration of Prague (1983). In 1985 she published an original criti cal study, My Emily Dickinson, which criticized editors for having homogenized the format and typography of Dickinson’s manuscripts, taming the unruly rigor of poems which were originally “multifaceted visual and verbal productions.” Howe also argu ed that the Amherst poet should not be viewed as a victim of repression, as many feminists see her, but as a refuser of congregations, a powerful will-to-reclusion in art—“One unchosen American women alone at home and choosing.” Emily’s home was a nomadi c space between orthodoxies.An understanding of Howe’s kinship with Dickinson’s poetic daring is helpful for reading The Birth-Mark, whose prose is poetic, and whose protagonist, Mary Rowlandson, shared Dickinson’s “stubborn strength in isolation.” The captivity narratives ar e portals into the antinomian controversy of New England, which was “the primordial struggle of North American literary expression” (p. 4). It is not Gilbert and Gubar to whom Howe has recourse in her analyses of hostage consciousness. She cites the philo sophy of Emmanuel Lévinas. As with feminism, which she extends rather than follows, Howe takes up the philosophy of alterity without its orthodoxy. (In the face of frontier brutality she cannot discern the “Father of orphans and defender of widows” of Psalm 68.) Encounters in the wilderness of tribes, woods, and waters aroused an immodest otherness within the American literary unconscious, unsettling the styles of expression and selfhood which the puritan colonies were trying to instantiate. The literary awakening of Dickinson, Rowlandson, Melville, Hawthorne, and other writers was not due to the Great Awakening urged by churches, but to the traumatic transfer of sovereignty from God to frontier, a permanent revolution to which these writers’ imaginations would remain exposed.Howe’s new foray into criticism tracks the textual marginalia which yield the visionary utterances of Rowlandson and Hutchinson. A self-confessed “library cormorant,” Howe gathers a quiet spectacle of testimonies, those of separated loved ones dragged int o “Removes” by tribes of Native Americans. These resonant texts from New England village libraries and major collections at Harvard, are melded together by Howe’s intuitive, almost telepathic sensibility into a kind of spiritual drama informed by critical acumen. Howe takes her bearings from Patricia Caldwell’s essay “The Antinomian Language Controversy,” which appeared in the Harvard Theological Review in 1976. The dislocating frontier experience for Hutchinson, Rowlandson, and others forced the c reation of a different language. It is with this antinomian language that Howe develops a sensitive rapport, echoing its myriad haunting voices in her commentaries. What Gadamer calls effective history broods and rustles inside her [End Page 193] writing with lyrical unease. Indeed, Howe’s work is a creative example of the fusion of horizons which Gadamer says epitomizes the hermeneutic event. Howe’s personal method as revealed in her interview: “Not to explain the work, not to trans late it, but to meet the work with writing... Not just to write a tribute, but to meet her [Dickinson] in the tribute. And that’s a kind of fusion” (p. 158). Some scholars will find her method obscure. But it’s hard to find anything negative at this height. Howe would have us meet others at their most exposed, delicate point, where their vulnerability... (shrink)

Almost everyone has an intuitive notion of what a random number is. For example, consider these two series of binary digits: 01010101010101010101 01101100110111100010 The first is obviously constructed according to a simple rule; it consists of the number 01 repeated ten times. If one were asked to speculate on how the series might continue, one could predict with considerable confidence that the next two digits would be 0 and 1. Inspection of the second series of digits yields no such comprehensive (...) pattern. There is no obvious rule governing the formation of the number, and there is no rational way to guess the succeeding digits. The arrangement seems haphazard; in other words, the sequence appears to be a random assortment of 0's and 1's. (shrink)

What could be more certain than the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4? Since the time of the ancient Greeks mathematicians have believed there is little---if anything---as unequivocal as a proved theorem. In fact, mathematical statements that can be proved true have often been regarded as a more solid foundation for a system of thought than any maxim about morals or even physical objects. The 17th-century German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz even envisioned a ``calculus'' of reasoning such (...) that all disputes could one day be settled with the words ``Gentlemen, let us compute!'' By the beginning of this century symbolic logic had progressed to such an extent that the German mathematician David Hilbert declared that all mathematical questions are in principle decidable, and he confidently set out to codify once and for all the methods of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)