Penelope Maddy. Realism in Mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003, p. 126. ISBN 0-19-824035-X
The possibility remained that the axioms of ZFC would be enough to
establish the continuum hypothesis as true, but Gödel for one did not
expect this.
What does "for one" mean in this context? The meaning of the sentence would be perfectly clear to me if "for one" were omitted. How do these words modify or amend its meaning?
Best Answer
For one ordinarily modifies the preceding NP. In practice it has much the same meaning as at least: that the NP is one entity occupying the particular syntactic/semantic role which the sentences assigns, and there may be other entities occupying that role.
The phrase is always ‘parenthetical’: it’s really a shorthand way of qualifying your implication without making a big deal of explaining the qualification. In your sentence, for instance, the author is just making sure that we do not understand his particular notice of Gödel's response to this possibility as an indication that Gödel was the only mathematician who did not expect this result.