Jon Barwise, former
philosophy professor, dies at 57
K. Jon Barwise, a former
Stanford professor renowned for his research in
mathematical logic, his ingenuity in applying
mathematical techniques to outstanding problems in other
disciplines, and his pioneering efforts in logic
pedagogy, died of cancer March 4 in Bloomington, Ind. He
was 57.
Barwise was a co-founder
and the first director of the Center for the Study of
Language and Information at Stanford, and the first
director of the Symbolic Systems Program. He taught at
Stanford from 1979 to 1981, and from 1983 to 1990. At the
time of his death he was College Professor of Philosophy,
Computer Science and Mathematics at Indiana University,
where he joined the faculty in 1990.
"From the European
perspective," said Johan van Benthem of the
University of Amsterdam, "Jon was one of those
people who define a whole field. Many students and
colleagues on other continents who had never even met him
felt their work shaped by the force of his ideas and
personality -- because of the power of his
publications."
Barwise was born in
Independence, Mo., on June 29, 1942, to Kenneth T. and
Evelyn Barwise. He attended Yale University, where he
received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and
philosophy in 1963. He received his doctorate in
mathematics in 1967 from Stanford, where he studied logic
under Professor Solomon Feferman of Stanford and
Professor Dana Scott, now at Carnegie Mellon University.
In 1992 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Pennsylvania.
"Jon was a
builder," said Feferman. "He liked carpentry
and remodeling houses and helping to create new academic
projects and programs, however much time and effort they
took. In pursuing these, he carried people along with his
convictions and enthusiasms, never insistent, always
good-humored."
Prior to Stanford, Barwise
held appointments in mathematics and computer science at
Yale and the University of Wisconsin. He also held
one-year visiting positions at Oxford University and the
University of California-Los Angeles, and was twice a
fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford.
Throughout his prolific
career, Barwise sought to develop a better theoretical
understanding of information content: how it is expressed
in language, computers or graphical representations, and
how it is transferred from one form of representation to
another. His first book, Admissible Sets and
Structures (1975), developed the theory of admissible
sets and applied it to definability theory, a branch of
logic devoted to the precise study of the expressive
power of formal languages (for example, mathematical
languages). The techniques he pioneered in this work are
still being applied and extended today.
Situations and
Attitudes (1983), his second book, coauthored with
Professor John Perry of Stanford, introduced the notion
of situation semantics, a broadly philosophical and
mathematical approach to the study of meaning in natural
(i.e., spoken human) languages. Situation semantics and
situation theory are today one of several tools used by
linguists studying the rules that determine the
information content of sentences in a language.
Barwise's third book, The
Liar: An Essay on Truth and Circularity (1987),
coauthored with Professor John Etchemendy of Stanford,
combined ideas from situation semantics and insights of
the British philosopher of language J. L. Austin to study
circular or self-referential claims, such as the
so-called Liar Paradox ("What I am now saying is
false"). New developments in non-well-founded set
theory by the mathematician Peter Aczel of Manchester
University were used to give a precise, non-paradoxical
model of these circular claims.
With Professor Larry Moss
of Indiana, Barwise continued to pursue the theory of
non-well-founded sets and to apply it to a wide variety
of circular phenomena in computer science, linguistics
and logic. This work was presented in a fourth book, Vicious
Circles: On the Mathematics of Circular Phenomena
(1996).
In his fifth research
monograph, Information Flow: The Logic of Distributed
Systems (1997), coauthored with Jerry Seligman,
Barwise proposed a theory of how information flows
through complex systems as diverse as computers and
natural languages. Central to this theory is the notion
of an information channel, capable of preserving
information as it is transmitted through a complex,
causally interacting system.
Barwise's extensive
contributions to logic went well beyond the topics of
these five monographs. He authored or co-authored nearly
100 articles on topics ranging from infinitary logic (the
logic of formal languages allowing infinitely long
sentences) to generalized quantifiers (phrases like
"most people," "few dogs," "many
prime numbers") and heterogeneous inference
(reasoning that employs information represented in more
than one form, such as a map and written directions).
He also edited several
landmark volumes in logic, including The Syntax and
Semantics of Infinitary Languages (1968), The
Handbook of Mathematical Logic (1975), Model-theoretic
Logics (with Solomon Feferman, 1985) and Logical
Reasoning with Diagrams (with Gerard Allwein of
Indiana University, 1996).
In addition to his
substantial research contributions, Barwise was deeply
committed to the teaching of logic. With Etchemendy, he
developed numerous pieces of innovative courseware to
help convey abstract concepts in logic. These were
published with a series of textbooks, including The
Language of First-order Logic (1990), Tarski's
World (1991), Turing's World (1993), Hyperproof
(1994) and Language, Proof and Logic (2000).
"Jon always said that
he considered his most important contribution to logic to
be his development of new teaching techniques and
methods," said Etchemendy.
Barwise and Etchemendy
shared the 1997 Educom Medal for their contribution to
logic pedagogy. Educom is a nonprofit consortium of
colleges, universities and other organizations dedicated
to the transformation of higher education through the
application of information technologies. It has 600
institutional members and nearly 100 corporate
associates.
During the last year of
his life, Barwise conducted an extensive e-mail
correspondence with family, friends and colleagues,
cataloging his courageous efforts to deal with and
surmount his illness, and his philosophical reflections
on life, death and logic.
"Jon taught us how to
die," said Irene Scott, wife of Barwise's teacher
Dana Scott.
"Jon will be sorely
missed as one of the key thinkers and leaders pursuing a
broad vision of logic as an analysis of information and
cognition," said van Benthem. "My own world
suddenly seems lonelier."
Barwise is survived by his
wife, Mary Ellen, of Bloomington, and three children:
Melanie of Madison, Wis.; Jon Russell of Portland, Ore.;
and Claire of Bloomington.
A memorial service will be
held at Indiana University in Bloomington on Sunday,
April 30. For more information call (812) 855-1093, (812)
855-7088, or see http://www-vil.cs.indiana.edu/barwise.html SR
Donations may be made to
Ting-Sha Institute (Cancer Retreat Center), P.O. Box 226,
Pt. Reyes Station, CA 94956.
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