We survey the theory of Mučnik (weak) and Medvedev (strong) degrees of subsets of ωω with particular attention to the degrees of subsets of ω2. Sections 1–6 present the major definitions and results in a uniform notation. Sections 7–16 present proofs, some more complete than others, of the major results of the subject together with much of the required background material.

The paper [Tarski: Les fondements de la géométrie des corps, Annales de la Société Polonaise de Mathématiques, pp. 29–34, 1929] is in many ways remarkable. We address three historico-philosophical issues that force themselves upon the reader. First we argue that in this paper Tarski did not live up to his own methodological ideals, but displayed instead a much more pragmatic approach. Second we show that Leśniewski's philosophy and systems do not play the significant role that one may be tempted to assign to them at first glance. Especially the role of background logic must be at least partially allocated to Russell's systems of Principia mathematica. This analysis leads us, third, to a threefold distinction of the technical ways in which the domain of discourse comes to be embodied in a theory. Having all of this in place, we discuss why we have to reject the argument in [Gruszczyński and Pietruszczak: Full development ofTarski's Geometry of Solids, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. 4 (2008), no. 4, pp. 481–540] according to which Tarski has made a certain mistake.

Vopěnka proved long ago that every set of ordinals is set-generic over HOD, Gödel's inner model of hereditarily ordinal-definable sets. Here we show that the entire universe V is class-generic over (HOD,S), and indeed over the even smaller inner model =(L[S],S), where S is the Stability predicate. We refer to the inner model as the Stable Core of V. The predicate S has a simple definition which is more absolute than any definition of HOD; in particular, it is possible to add reals which are not set-generic but preserve the Stable Core (this is not possible for HOD by Vopěnka's theorem).