Tim Smiley: an anecdote

Tim Smiley, an Fellow of my Cambridge college (Clare), died about two weeks ago. He had a long and distinguished career, holding major College offices such as Senior Tutor, while garnering academic accolades, such as becoming a Fellow of the British Academy. Although his specialism was logic, chiefly philosophical logic, we seldom spoke about technical matters, which I now regret. I’m not sure he was ever aware of the sort of work I was doing. Even today, most people find computational logic pretty obscure. But I do have one little story about him.

After dinner

As a young Fellow of Clare, I dined in College fairly regularly but never stayed late, not wanting to leave my wife home alone. As I rose to leave, one of the other older Fellows said, “Going back to the lab, are you?” After I set him right, he went on to say, “Let me tell you a story about Tim Smiley.” I had to hear him out. “Once when he left dinner early, I asked him why and he said that he was going to gather his students and they would all dance on Wittgenstein’s grave.” (Wittgenstein is buried in Cambridge.)

The moment of truth

A few days later, I bumped into Tim and asked about this. “I never did that”, he said, “But it’s not a bad idea.”