In Dunedin to read a paper at the University of Otago philosophy department. I was rehashing the line about Church’s Thesis taken in the last chapter from my Gödel book (and I don’t feel too guilty about talking about something published a few years ago now, as comments can still affect how I treat matters in the second edition of the book). I’d worried a bit in advance of giving this talk in Christchurch and Otago that the first half — about the general idea of a squeezing argument and Kreisel’s squeezing argument in particular — would be otiose. But not so. It turned out, a bit surprisingly, that no one in either audience had heard of the idea. Maybe I’ll write a stand alone note here (quite separate from the more contentious stuff about Church’s Thesis) to spread the word.
Another, and this time really lovely, surprise here was to discover that the Public Art Gallery has a quite stunning Florentine masterwork by Zanobi Machiavelli (proudly displayed as the most important old art work in New Zealand). The model for the Madonna is believed to be Lucrezia Buti who was the model for Fra’ Filippo Lippi and bore him his son Filippino. The painting is surely a reason to visit Dunedin all by itself.