On the History of Polish Logic
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Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities), 21Pp
Forthcoming in: Uncovering Facts and Values, ed. A. Kuzniar and J. Odrowąż-Sypniewska (Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities), 21pp. Abstract Alfred Tarski seems to endorse a partial conception of truth, the T-schema, which he believes might be clarified by the application of empirical methods, specifically citing the experimental results of Arne Næss (1938a). The aim of this paper is to argue that Næss’ empirical work confirmed Tarski’s semantic conception of truth, among others. In the first part, I lay out the case for believing that Tarski’s T-schema, while not the formal and generalizable Convention-T, provides a partial account of truth that may be buttressed by an examination of the ordinary person’s views of truth. Then, I address a concern raised by Tarski’s contemporaries who saw Næss’ results as refuting Tarski’s semantic conception. Following that, I summarize Næss’ results. Finally, I will contend with a few objections that suggest a strict interpretation of Næss’ results might recommend an overturning of Tarski’s theory. Keywords: truth, Alfred Tarski, Arne Næss, Vienna Circle, experimental philosophy Joseph Ulatowski ORDINARY TRUTH IN TARSKI AND NÆSS 1. Introduction Many of Alfred Tarski's better known papers on truth (e.g. 1944; 1983b), logical consequence (1983c), semantic concepts in general (1983a), or definability (1948) identify two conditions that successful definitions of “truth,” “logical consequence,” or “definition” require: formal correctness and material (or intuitive) adequacy.1 The first condition Tarski calls “formal correctness” because a definition of truth (for a given formal language) is formally correct when it is constructed in a manner that allows us to avoid both circular definition and semantic paradoxes. -
Alfred Tarski His:Bio:Tar: Sec Alfred Tarski Was Born on January 14, 1901 in Warsaw, Poland (Then Part of the Russian Empire)
bio.1 Alfred Tarski his:bio:tar: sec Alfred Tarski was born on January 14, 1901 in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). Described as \Napoleonic," Tarski was boisterous, talkative, and intense. His energy was often reflected in his lectures|he once set fire to a wastebasket while disposing of a cigarette during a lecture, and was forbidden from lecturing in that building again. Tarski had a thirst for knowledge from a young age. Although later in life he would tell students that he stud- ied logic because it was the only class in which he got a B, his high school records show that he got A's across the board| even in logic. He studied at the Univer- sity of Warsaw from 1918 to 1924. Tarski Figure 1: Alfred Tarski first intended to study biology, but be- came interested in mathematics, philosophy, and logic, as the university was the center of the Warsaw School of Logic and Philosophy. Tarski earned his doctorate in 1924 under the supervision of Stanislaw Le´sniewski. Before emigrating to the United States in 1939, Tarski completed some of his most important work while working as a secondary school teacher in Warsaw. His work on logical consequence and logical truth were written during this time. In 1939, Tarski was visiting the United States for a lecture tour. During his visit, Germany invaded Poland, and because of his Jewish heritage, Tarski could not return. His wife and children remained in Poland until the end of the war, but were then able to emigrate to the United States as well. -
Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism
S t udia Philosophica Wratislaviensia Supplementary Volume, English Edition 2012 KRZYSZTOF SZLACHCIC University of Wrocław Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism. Some Remarks on the Dispute between I. Dąmbska and L. Fleck* Abstract My comments are focused on the debate between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. In the course of their debate, which took place in the 1930’s, they discussed some basic issues of epistemology, focusing on the problems of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge, and truth. The aim of the paper is to place their debate in a the historical context and to demonstrate the novelty of Fleck’s arguments, especially in comparison with Thomas S. Kuhn’s later contribution. I also examine the dominant interpretations of Fleck’s theory of knowledge, as well as the reasons for which his philosophical ideas, especially Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (1935) have fallen into the philosophical obliv- ion. I argue that Fleck’s views, although innovative, were less radical than it is commonly thought. My comments focus on the polemic that ensued in the 1930s between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. The authors involved in it either directly or indirectly referred to the fundamental questions of the theory of cognition: the question of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge (its communicabil- ity), relative nature of scientific knowledge, truth. The small total volume of texts which directly referred to the views of the adversaries as well as the place where the dispute occurred (Lvov, a geographically peripheral part of the “civilised world” at the time) could suggest that this was just a minor episode in the history of thought, not worth mentioning. -
Alfred Tarski and a Watershed Meeting in Logic: Cornell, 1957 Solomon Feferman1
Alfred Tarski and a watershed meeting in logic: Cornell, 1957 Solomon Feferman1 For Jan Wolenski, on the occasion of his 60th birthday2 In the summer of 1957 at Cornell University the first of a cavalcade of large-scale meetings partially or completely devoted to logic took place--the five-week long Summer Institute for Symbolic Logic. That meeting turned out to be a watershed event in the development of logic: it was unique in bringing together for such an extended period researchers at every level in all parts of the subject, and the synergetic connections established there would thenceforth change the face of mathematical logic both qualitatively and quantitatively. Prior to the Cornell meeting there had been nothing remotely like it for logicians. Previously, with the growing importance in the twentieth century of their subject both in mathematics and philosophy, it had been natural for many of the broadly representative meetings of mathematicians and of philosophers to include lectures by logicians or even have special sections devoted to logic. Only with the establishment of the Association for Symbolic Logic in 1936 did logicians begin to meet regularly by themselves, but until the 1950s these occasions were usually relatively short in duration, never more than a day or two. Alfred Tarski was one of the principal organizers of the Cornell institute and of some of the major meetings to follow on its heels. Before the outbreak of World War II, outside of Poland Tarski had primarily been involved in several Unity of Science Congresses, including the first, in Paris in 1935, and the fifth, at Harvard in September, 1939. -
L. Maligranda REVIEW of the BOOK by MARIUSZ URBANEK
Математичнi Студiї. Т.50, №1 Matematychni Studii. V.50, No.1 УДК 51 L. Maligranda REVIEW OF THE BOOK BY MARIUSZ URBANEK, “GENIALNI – LWOWSKA SZKOL A MATEMATYCZNA” (POLISH) [GENIUSES – THE LVOV SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS] L. Maligranda. Review of the book by Mariusz Urbanek, “Genialni – Lwowska Szko la Matema- tyczna” (Polish) [Geniuses – the Lvov school of mathematics], Wydawnictwo Iskry, Warsaw 2014, 283 pp. ISBN: 978-83-244-0381-3 , Mat. Stud. 50 (2018), 105–112. This review is an extended version of my short review of Urbanek's book that was published in MathSciNet. Here it is written about his book in greater detail, which was not possible in the short review. I will present facts described in the book as well as some false information there. My short review of Urbanek’s book was published in MathSciNet [24]. Here I write about his book in greater detail. Mariusz Urbanek, writer and journalist, author of many books devoted to poets, politicians and other figures of public life, decided to delve also in the world of mathematicians. He has written a book on the phenomenon in the history of Polish science called the Lvov School of Mathematics. Let us add that at the same time there were also the Warsaw School of Mathematics and the Krakow School of Mathematics, and the three formed together the Polish School of Mathematics. The Lvov School of Mathematics was a group of mathematicians in the Polish city of Lvov (Lw´ow,in Polish; now the city is in Ukraine) in the period 1920–1945 under the leadership of Stefan Banach and Hugo Steinhaus, who worked together and often came to the Scottish Caf´e (Kawiarnia Szkocka) to discuss mathematical problems. -
How to Study Mathematics – the Manual for Warsaw University 1St Year Students in the Interwar Period
TECHNICAL TRANSACTIONS CZASOPISMO TECHNICZNE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES NAUKI PODSTAWOWE 2-NP/2015 KALINA BARTNICKA* HOW TO STUDY MATHEMATICS – THE MANUAL FOR WARSAW UNIVERSITY 1ST YEAR STUDENTS IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD JAK STUDIOWAĆ MATEMATYKĘ – PORADNIK DLA STUDENTÓW PIERWSZEGO ROKU Z OKRESU MIĘDZYWOJENNEGO Abstract In 1926 and in 1930, members of Mathematics and Physics Students’ Club of the Warsaw University published the guidance for the first year students. These texts would help the freshers in constraction of the plans and course of theirs studies in the situation of so called “free study”. Keywords: Warsaw University, Interwar period, “Free study”, Study of Mathematics, Freshers, Students’ clubs, Guidance for students Streszczenie W 1926 r. i w 1930 r. Koło Naukowe Matematyków i Fizyków Studentów Uniwersytetu War- szawskiego opublikowało poradnik dla studentów pierwszego roku matematyki. Są to teksty, które pomagały pierwszoroczniakom w racjonalnym skonstruowaniu planu i toku ich studiów w warunkach tzw. „wolnego stadium”. Słowa kluczowe: Uniwersytet Warszawski, okres międzywojenny, „wolne stadium”, studio wanie matematyki, pierwszoroczniacy, studenckie koła naukowe, poradnik dla studentów DOI: 10.4467/2353737XCT.15.203.4408 * L. & A. Birkenmajetr Institute of History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland; [email protected] 14 This paper is focused primarily on the departure from the “free study” in university learning in Poland after it regained its independence in 1918. The idea of the “free study” had been strongly cherished by professors and staff of the Philosophy Department of Warsaw University even though the majority of students (including the students of mathematics and physics) were not interested in pursuing an academic career. The concept of free study left to the students the decision about the choice of subjects they wished to study and about the plan of their work. -
NOTE the Theorem on Planar Graphs
HISTORIA MATHEMATICA 12(19X5). 356-368 NOTE The Theorem on Planar Graphs JOHN W. KENNEDY AND LOUIS V. QUINTAS Mathematics Department, Pace University, Pace Plaza, New York, New York, 10038 AND MACEJ M. SYSKO Institute of Computer Science, University of Wroc+aw, ul. Prz,esyckiego 20, 511.51 Wroclow, Poland In the late 1920s several mathematicians were on the verge of discovering a theorem for characterizing planar graphs. The proof of such a theorem was published in 1930 by Kazi- mierz Kuratowski, and soon thereafter the theorem was referred to as the Kuratowski Theorem. It has since become the most frequently cited result in graph theory. Recently, the name of Pontryagin has been coupled with that of Kuratowski when identifying this result. The events related to this development are examined with the object of determining to whom and in what proportion the credit should be given for the discovery of this theorem. 0 1985 AcademicPress. Inc Pendant les 1920s avancts quelques mathkmaticiens &aient B la veille de dCcouvrir un theor&me pour caracttriser les graphes planaires. La preuve d’un tel th6or&me a et6 publiCe en 1930 par Kazimierz Kuratowski, et t6t apres cela, on a appele ce thCor&me le ThCortime de Kuratowski. Depuis ce temps, c’est le rtsultat le plus citC de la thCorie des graphes. Rtcemment le nom de Pontryagin a &e coup16 avec celui de Kuratowski en parlant de ce r&&at. Nous examinons les CvCnements relatifs g ce dCveloppement pour determiner 2 qui et dans quelle proportion on devrait attribuer le mtrite de la dCcouverte de ce th6oreme. -
COMPLEXITY of CURVES 1. Introduction in This Note We Study
COMPLEXITY OF CURVES UDAYAN B. DARJI AND ALBERTO MARCONE Abstract. We show that each of the classes of hereditarily locally connected, 1 ¯nitely Suslinian, and Suslinian continua is ¦1-complete, while the class of 0 regular continua is ¦4-complete. 1. Introduction In this note we study some natural classes of continua from the viewpoint of descriptive set theory: motivations, style and spirit are the same of papers such as [Dar00], [CDM02], and [Kru03]. Pol and Pol use similar techniques to study problems in continuum theory in [PP00]. By a continuum we always mean a compact and connected metric space. A subcontinuum of a continuum X is a subset of X which is also a continuum. A continuum is nondegenerate if it contains more than one point. A curve is a one- dimensional continuum. Let us start with the de¯nitions of some classes of continua: all these can be found in [Nad92], which is our main reference for continuum theory. De¯nition 1.1. A continuum X is hereditarily locally connected if every subcon- tinuum of X is locally connected, i.e. a Peano continuum. A continuum X is hereditarily decomposable if every nondegenerate subcontin- uum of X is decomposable, i.e. is the union of two proper subcontinua. A continuum X is regular if every point of X has a neighborhood basis consisting of sets with ¯nite boundary. A continuum X is rational if every point of X has a neighborhood basis consisting of sets with countable boundary. The following classes of continua were de¯ned by Lelek in [Lel71]. -
Adolf Lindenbaum: Notes on His Life, with Bibliography and Selected References
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Springer - Publisher Connector Log. Univers. 8 (2014), 285–320 c 2014 The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com 1661-8297/14/030285-36, published online December 3, 2014 DOI 10.1007/s11787-014-0108-2 Logica Universalis Adolf Lindenbaum: Notes on his Life, with Bibliography and Selected References Jan Zygmunt and Robert Purdy Abstract. Notes on the life of Adolf Lindenbaum, a complete bibliography of his published works, and selected references to his unpublished results. Mathematics Subject Classification. 01A60, 01A70, 01A73, 03-03. Keywords. Adolf Lindenbaum, biography, bibliography, unpublished works. This paper is dedicated to Adolf Lindenbaum (1904–1941)—Polish- Jewish mathematician and logician; a member of the Warsaw school of mathe- matics under Waclaw Sierpi´nski and Stefan Mazurkiewicz and school of math- ematical logic under JanLukasiewicz and Stanislaw Le´sniewski;1 and Alfred Tarski’s closest collaborator of the inter-war period. Our paper is divided into three main parts. The first part is biograph- ical and narrative in character. It gathers together what little is known of Lindenbaum’s short life. The second part is a bibliography of Lindenbaum’s published output, including his public lectures. Our aim there is to be complete and definitive. The third part is a list of selected references in the literature attesting to his unpublished results2 and delineating their extent. Just to confuse things, we name the second and third parts of our paper, respectively, “Bibliography Part One” and “Bibliography Part Two”. Why, we no longer remember. -
Alice in the Wonderful Land of Logical Notions)
The Mystery of the Fifth Logical Notion (Alice in the Wonderful Land of Logical Notions) Jean-Yves Beziau University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian Research Council and Brazilian Academy of Philosophy [email protected] Abstract We discuss a theory presented in a posthumous paper by Alfred Tarski entitled “What are logical notions?”. Although the theory of these logical notions is something outside of the main stream of logic, not presented in logic textbooks, it is a very interesting theory and can easily be understood by anybody, especially studying the simplest case of the four basic logical notions. This is what we are doing here, as well as introducing a challenging fifth logical notion. We first recall the context and origin of what are here called Tarski- Lindenbaum logical notions. In the second part, we present these notions in the simple case of a binary relation. In the third part, we examine in which sense these are considered as logical notions contrasting them with an example of a non-logical relation. In the fourth part, we discuss the formulations of the four logical notions in natural language and in first- order logic without equality, emphasizing the fact that two of the four logical notions cannot be expressed in this formal language. In the fifth part, we discuss the relations between these notions using the theory of the square of opposition. In the sixth part, we introduce the notion of variety corresponding to all non-logical notions and we argue that it can be considered as a logical notion because it is invariant, always referring to the same class of structures. -
Geometry and Teaching
Andrew McFarland Joanna McFarland James T. Smith Editors Alfred Tarski Early Work in Poland – Geometry and Teaching This book is dedicated to Helen Marie Smith, in gratitude for her advice and support, and to Maria Anna McFarland, as she enters a world of new experiences. Andrew McFarland • Joanna McFarland James T. Smith Editors Alfred Tarski Early Work in Poland—Geometry and Teaching with a Bibliographic Supplement Foreword by Ivor Grattan-Guinness Editors Andrew McFarland Joanna McFarland Páock, Poland Páock, Poland James T. Smith Department of Mathematics San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA, USA ISBN 978-1-4939-1473-9 ISBN 978-1-4939-1474-6 (eB ook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-1474-6 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945118 Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 01A60, 01A70, 01A75, 03A10, 03B05, 03E75, 06A99, 28-03, 28A75, 43A07, 51M04, 51M25, 97B50, 97D40, 97G99, 97M30 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. -
NATALIA ANNA MICHNA LESZEK SOSNOWSKI Difficult Academic
Roman Ingarden and His Times https: //doi. org/10.12797 /9788381382106.04 DOMINIKA CZAKON NATALIA ANNA MICHNA LESZEK SOSNOWSKI Jagiellonian University in Krakow On the Difficult Academic and Personal Relationship of Roman Ingarden and Kazimierz Twardowski Abstract The present article has the character of a historical review concerning an import ant part of the biography of Roman Witold Ingarden. In his memoirs, Ingarden included several facts and accusations, and mentioned individuals who, in his opinion, had a negative influence on the development of his academic career, especially regarding his ability to obtain a position at Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. The reasons for this, which were various and numerous, appeared from the moment Ingarden obtained habilitation. Not without significance were the opinions of his fellow philosophers concerning phenomenology in general and Ingardens research papers in particular. In each case, the focal point at which all academic and organisational events concerning philosophy converged was the person of Kazimierz Twardowski. A discussion of the period of their collaboration in Lviv is preceded by a presentation of the situation some years earlier, in which Ingarden combined work as a middle-school teacher, original philosophical work, and, finally, work on habilitation. Key words: Roman Ingarden, Kazimierz Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Jan Ka zimierz University of Lviv, habilitation 64 Dominika Czakon · Natalia Anna Michna · Leszek Sosnowski In the Service of Philosophy As Ingarden’s correspondence shows, his relationship with Twardowski was very close, even cordial, although not devoid of the formalism resulting from the customs of that time. Ingarden kept Twardowski informed about private matters and turned to him for advice on academic, publishing, and occupational issues, the most important being the issue of habilitation.