REALITY AND EXPERIENCE VIENNA CIRCLE COLLECTION

Editorial Committee

HENK L. MULDER, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University, Boston, Mass., U.S.A. BRIAN McGUINNESS, The Queen's College, Oxford, England

Editorial Advisory Board

ALFRED J. A YER, New Col/ege, Oxford, England ALBERT E. BLUMBERG, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. HASKELL B. CURR Y, Pennsylvania State University, Pa., U.S.A. HERBERT FEIGL, University ofMinnesota, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S.A. ERWIN N. HIEBERT, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. J AAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy ofFinland, Helsinki, Finland, Stanford University, Calif., and Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla., U.S.A. KARL MENGER, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Ill., U.S.A. GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden, The Netherlands ANTHONY M. QUINTON, New College, Oxford, England J.F. STAAL, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.A.

VOLUME 12

EDITOR: ROBERT S. COHEN EINO KAlLA (1890 - 1958) EINO KAlLA

REALITY AND EXPERIENCE Four Philosophical Essays

Edited by

ROBERTS. COHEN

with an Introduction by

G.H. VON WRIGHT

D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY

DORDRECHT: HOLLAND / BOSTON: U. S.A. LONDON: ENGLAND Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Kaila, Eino, 1890-1958. Reality and experience.

(Vienna circle collection; v. 12) "The philosophical and psychological writings of Eino Kaila": p. Includes index. CONTENTS: Logistic neopositivism. - On the system of the con• cepts of reality. - On the concept of reality in physical science. - The perceptual and conceptual components of everyday experience. 1. Reality - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Logical positiv- ism - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Experience - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Cohen, Robert Sonne. II. Title. III. Series. BD331.K23 III 78-10460 ISBN-I3: 978-90-277-0919-6 e-ISBN-I3: 978-94-009-9381-5 DOl: 10.1 007/978-94-009-9381-5

Essays 1-4 translated trom the German by Ann and Peter Kirschenmann

Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland

Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. Lincoln Building, 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, Mass. 02043, U.S.A.

All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction by G.H. von Wright ix

Editorial Preface xliii

Translators' Note xlv

1. Logistic Neopositivism. A critical study

2. On the System of the Concepts of Reality. A contribution to logical empiricism 59

3. On the Concept of Reality in Physical Science. Second contribution to logical empiricism 126

4. The Perceptual and Conceptual Components of Everyday Experience 259

The Philosophical and Psychological Writings of Eino Kaila 313

Index of Names 323

vii INTRODUCTION

Philosophically, there is a book which was a tremendous experience for me: Eino Kaila's hychology of the Person• ality _ His thesis that man lives strictly according to his needs - negative and positive - was shattering to me, but terribly true. And I built on this ground.

Ingmar Bergman J

1. This introductory essay is neither intended to be a full presentation nor to be a critical evaluation of the contributions to philosophy made by Eino Kaila. Kaila's work will speak to the reader through the four papers here published in English translation from the German. They belong in the tra• dition of the Vienna Circle and of logical empiricism. They cover, however, only one period or sector of Kaila's rich and varied life-work. This is the sector best integrated into the mainstream of contemporary philosophic thinking. The primary aim of this essay is to portray an impressive intellectual personality and to make a modest contribution to Finnish and Scandinavian intellectual history. Much of its content may be thought to be of 'local' relevance only. But considering the position which Kaila held in his country and considering his decisive influence on the development of philosophy in Finland, I hope that this local background will also interest an international circle of readers.

2. Eino Sakari Kaila was born on 9 August 1890, the oldest child in a family of nine. His father, Erkki Kaila, was at that time vicar of Alajarvi in Western Finland. Later he was appointed associate professor in the Faculty of Divinity in the Imperial Alexander University of Finland (later Helsinki University) and the family moved to Helsinki. After his academic career Erkki Kaila was bishop and, eventually, archbishop of Finland. An uncle of Erkki Kaila's had also been a professor of divinity and archbishop. Eino Kaila thus belonged to a family with distinguished academic and clerical traditions. His own attitude throughout his mature life was decidedly anti-clerical. According to what he told me, this began as an early protest against the family atmosphere. Yet, as we shall see, his own personality had unmistakably religious traits. ix x INTRODUCTION Eino Kalla went to school in Helsinki and was enrolled at the University in September 1908. He got his Master's degree in an exceptionally short time, at the age of only 19. He was examined in the two branches of philosophy, viz. 'theoretical' and 'practical', the former being his major subject, and also in aesthetics, economics, and Scandinavian history. His academic training was thus exclusively humanistic. Through self-study he later acquired an impress• ive knowledge also in the scientific subjects. But the lack of a proper scientific training in his early years may have been a hampering factor in his efforts to penetrate the depths of modern physical and biological theories. - In 1916 he got his doctorate with a dissertation in experimental. psychology, Uber die Motivation und die Entscheidung [13]. Soon after the First World War two new universities were founded in Finland, both of them in the country's ancient capital Turku (Abo). The one, called Abo Academy, had Swedish as its language of instruction. The other was called the Finnish University of Turku; later the name was simplified to University of Turku. The professor of philosophy in the former was Edvard Westermarck. In 1921 Kaila was made the first professor of philosophy at the latter. It thus happened that these two prominent figures in the history of Finnish philosophy were active for one decade in two adjacent, small aca• demic communities. But contrary to what might be expected, there was not much contact between the two men. Kaila had studied with Westermarck when the latter held the chair in practical philosophy in Helsinki, and he had great veneration for his colleague and former teacher. Westermarck, however, showed little interest in and understanding of the new trends in philosophy and psychology which Kaila soon began to champion. There was also a signifi• cant 'generation gap' separating the two. Westermarck remained throughout his long life faithful to the 'naturalistic' climate of opinion which in the Scandinavian countries stamped the 1880's. Darwin was for him the master scientist. Kaila's intellectual personality had been stamped for life by the 'neo-romanticism' of the 1890's and the early years of the century. (Cf. below p. xiii.) In 1930 Kaila was appointed professor of theoretical philosophy in Helsinki University. The appointment was preceded by controversy - as has often been the case with chairs in philosophy in Finland. Conservative elements in the university senate viewed with suspicion the philosophic 'modernist', who was also known for his liberal opinions on political and social questions of the day. Kaila's captivating brilliance, however, soon made him one of the leading intellectual figures of the university, indeed of the country. Even in his lifetime he was very much of a 'legend'. His INTRODUCTION xi lectures attracted big audiences, not only among students of humanistic subjects, but also among young scientists. A new generation of philosophers and psychologists grew up under his guidance and influence. Kaila's life-curve reached its peak in the years immediately before and during the Second World War. After eighteen years as professor in Helsinki, Kaila was made a member of the newly founded Academy of Finland. As academician he retained his teaching rights but was relieved of administrative and teaching obligations and was free to devote himself exclusively to research. In his later years he became somewhat isolated. A slight deafness contributed to this. Also, his paths in philosophy became more and more lonely, away from the main stream of logical empiricism and analytical philosophy. He had ambitious plans for a philosophic synthesis on a strict scientific basis. (Cf. below p. xxxvii.) This work remained a skeleton. Kaila died unexpectedly of a heart attack on 31 July 1958, shortly before his sixty-eighth birthday.

3. The academic world in which Kaila was reared was in many ways more isolated and more elitist than is the case in Finland and most other countries today. The predominant influence in scholarship and science was German. In the second place it was French. Cultural relations with the English-speaking countries were little developed; Westermarck was in this regard an exception and a pioneer. Nor were the personal contacts between Finland and Scan• dinavia as lively as they became after Finland's independence. Yet Scandinavia including Finland was in certain ways more of a cultural unity than it is today. The language of the educated class in Finland was still to a large extent Swedish. The literature of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was an integral part of an educated Finn's spiritual inheritance. Kaila's familiarity, for example, with Swedish poetry, of which he knew a vast amount by heart, was impressive and would nowadays be considered exceptional. Kaila's parents' home was bilingual, but the main emphasis was on Finnish. The same holds true of the family of which he was himself the head. He was sent to a Finnish school and it was in the country's Finnish-speaking intellec• tual circles that, in the first place, he became a central figure. On the language issue which divided the educated strata of society, particularly in the decades between the two world wars, he took a liberal view. He and I always used Swedish in our conversations and correspondence. It should be mentioned that when Kaila later in life felt alienated from the Finnish academic bour• geoisie, his orientation to the Swedish language and traditions of the country grew stronger. The most personal statement of his view of life, the dialogues xii INTRODUCTION

Tankens oro ('The Disquietude of Thought' [71]) he wrote in Swedish? Throughout his life, he used German in his scholarly writings - which was usual in Finland until the Second World War. During the decade between his graduation and his assumption of the pro• fessorship Kaila was also active as a translator of belles lettres into Finnish. He translated numerous works from French, German, English, Danish and Swedish. In the 1930's he produced an excellent translation of Hume's Inquiry into Finnish. These activities alone testify to Kaila's extraordinary linguistic abilities. By modern standards, KaiIa had not travelled much for purposes of study and research. Before the First World War he visited Paris (1911) and Berlin (1914); a few years after the war he went to Munich. About the journeys to Germany I know nothing. In Paris he attended classes held by Bergson, whose elegance as a lecturer he admired. Kaila was himself a most accomplished lecturer. Many classes of students, particulary in Helsinki in the 1930's, can testify to the eloquence and catching enthusiasm of his lectures - on the psychology of personality, on the epistemology of logical empiricism, or on Ancient philosophy. Kalla's by far most important foreign travels had as their destination Vienna. In 1928, it seems, he sought contact with Carnap and Schlick by letter and in the following year he paid a first visit to Vienna. He returned there on Rockefeller grants in 1930,1932, and 1934. He got to know several members of the Vienna Circle and took part in its meetings. From January to June 1932 and again for a shorter period in 1934 he carried out exper• imental research in psychology in the city orphanage (Kinderiibemahmestelle der Gemeinde Wien). The research laboratory attached to the orphanage had been founded by Charlotte BUhler. She and her husband, Karl BUhler, were also among Kaila's intellectual Viennese contacts. In spite of an early orientation to British philosophy - particularly Broad, Keynes, and Russell - Kaila never visited England. In 1948 he paid his only visit to the United States. Philosophically it was of little reward. The new world across the Atlantic estranged him, and he had a presentiment that he would never again leave Finland.

4. In a public lecture, delivered to the Academy of Finland and published ([90], 1953) under a title which in English would be 'The Place of Qualities in a World of Quantities', Kaila has described his philosophic awakening and the monistic vision which was going to guide all his work in philosophy. The event took place in Kaila's late puberty. he was then sixteen years of age 3 - INTRODUCTION xiii on a beautiful summer day when he was floating in a rowboat on a Finnish lake watching clouds drifting in the sky. Then it appeared to him in a flash "that everything which there is is in some very deep sense a unified whole, so to sayan 'all-unity', a self-structuring totality. In fact, there has through all the years ultimately been only one scientific task which has kept me engaged, viz., that of clarifying, supporting and proving true this monistic or unitarian conception." ([90], p. 261.) Kalla's monism, his striving for a 'synthetic philosophy', is deeply rooted in his intellectual personality. But it can and should also be seen against the background of the climate of opinion which prevailed in Finland and the other Scandinavian countries when he was a young man. This period is sometimes called neo-romanticism in contrast with the preceding period of naturalism. (Cf. above, p. x.) In Finland it is also known as the era of national romanticism. It was the time of the classics in Finnish literature, painting, music, and architecture. Tower• ing above the rest was Sibelius. In his youth Kaila was associated with the circle of artists who had their villas on or near the lake of Tuusula, north of Helsinki: the writer Juhani Aho, the painters Halonen and Eero Jiirnefelt, and the latter's brother-in-law Sibelius. These people were then in their forties or fifties, Kaila around twenty. No person had made a deeper impact on Kaila than the master of Finnish music.4 In our conversations he often referred to his impressions of Sibelius. In philosophy the climate of opinion to which I am here referring as 'neo-romanticism' was a reaction against nineteenth-century naturalism, materialism, and positivism. The influential forces in Germany were the neo-Kantians of the schools of Marburg and Baden, and Dilthey's philosophy of the Geisteswissenschaften. These trends seem not to have influenced Kaila much and their impact on philosophy in Finland remained, I should say, surprisingly smalL Of greater importance were the philosophies of Bergson and of William James. The influence particularly of Bergson was consider• able also outside the sphere of professional philosophers. The philosophic influences from abroad on Scandinavia, including Finland, were to a great extent mediated by the Dane, Harald H~ffding. The first writing by Kaila listed in the Bibliography to this volume is a semipopular presentation of Bergson ([I], 1911) followed by presentations of H~ffding and James ([4] and [5], 1912). Perhaps one could say, with caution, that the philosophic sentiments of the day which most strongly appealed to Kaila represented an antimaterialist monism with a pantheistic tinge.s It was not, however, an idealism. Rather, it was something which might be called 'antimaterialist naturalism'. Spinoza can xiv INTRODUCTION be cited as its spiritual ancestor. Mind and matter were not to be thought of as two separate 'substances' but as aspects of the same world-stuff. In the opinion of many, the solution to the mind-body problem was a psycho• physical parallelism. This theory had a protagonist in H~ffding and had been much debated in the Philosophical Society in Helsinki around the turn of the century.6 A similar but more radical solution was the empirio-criticism or neutral monism of Mach and Avenarius, which was later also the standpoint of Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Mind. Their views did not fail to influence, or at least impress, Kaila. Kaila's youth also coincides with the heyday of the monistic movement championed by Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Ostwald. This vulgarized natural philosophy, bordering on materialism, made a not inconsiderable impact on intellectual life in Finland.7 It is noteworthy that Kaila, himself a convinced 'monist', felt great aversion for it. He regarded it as a counterfeit of serious, science-based philosophy. His critical attitude to the Haeckel-Ostwald monism is manifest in his review ([ 3], 1911) of some papers read at The First International Congress on Monism held in Germany in 1910 and in his rejoinder ([12], 1915) to the philosopher Rolf Lagerborg.

5. Eino Kaila was a strikingly strong, 'charismatic', personality. The impression he made was enhanced by the fact that he was also exceptionally good• looking. A certain aloofness of manners and frosty irony of speech which some people found wounding were the outer revelation of a certain shyness and difficulty to fit in with his social environment. He had many admirers and even adorers, but only few intimate friends. He could hardly have avoided provoking enemies among petty characters in his academic surroundings, whose hostile attitudes and sometimes vindictive actions contributed to the alienation and loneliness of his later years. Kaila had great intellectual endowments and a rare universal Hildung. Whether he had original talent in the most demanding sense is more difficult to say. He can hardly be said to have made decisive contributions to con• temporary thought. But he had remarkable visionary powers. It would not surprise me if future philosophers who read him recognize in his writings the anticipations of insights which later became current. Kaila's personality was marked by strong tensions between basic traits. There was an artistic vein in him. To it was related his craving for synthesis in philosophy, for a total view of the world (Weltanschauung). He also had a scientific mind. To this testify both his own experimental work i!l psychology and his deep concern with the philosophy of (exact) science. Furthermore, he INTRODUCTION xv had an acutely critical intelligence. He could let himself be carried away momentarily to heights of exaggerated enthusiasm for ideas which he thought great and profound. But his convictions, always strong, never stiffened to dogmatism. Persistent doubt and self-criticism made him constantly shift ground in his philosophic search. A typical reflexion of the coincidentill oppositorum in Kalla's personality is the brilliant address [40] which he gave in 1931 to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Hegel. Kalla's logical empiricism is poles apart from Hegel's philosophy. But Kaila's occupations with the problem of the Gestalt (cf. below, p. xix, p. xxiff, p. xxviiif and p. xxxv) and with the field-theories of modem physics made him sympathetic to the 'holistic' traits of Hegelian thinking. This is also appar• ent from his papers on Snellman, the great Finnish Hegelian ([60], 1941; [94] and [95],1956).8 The most deeply impressive feature of Kalla's personality was, to me, his passionate seriousness and complete devotion to his vocation. In this he reminds me of Wittgenstein. But there is, beside a resemblance, also a marked difference between the two men. I know no better way to describe it than by saying that both men had a radically different religion. Kaila's religiosity was what I should call aesthetic. Beauty and Truth were the two supreme ideas in his world, and at bottom they were One. His religion was a contemplation of the world as an orderly whole, a kosmos. This could not be said of Wittgenstein, in spite of the Spinozistic coloring of the remarks in the Tractatus and in the 1914-1916 Notebooks. His religiosity, but not Kalla's, was that of a restless heart and a soul tormented by thoughts of doom and of man's powerlessness and sinfulness. Deus sive Natura. In these words is condensed Kaila's religiosity. He often used them himself. The thought behind them got its fullest and most personal expression in his dialogues on the 'disquietude of thought' [69] and [71] written in the dark years of the Second World War. The two interlocutors are an artist and a phYSical scientist. When the latter asks the former whether he is religious, the artist answers that he is if there is such a thing as an 'atheist religion'. It should be remembered that 'atheist' was the label given to Spinoza by his Christian enemies. No doubt there exist ideas and sentiments akin to true religion which are a-theistic. They can consist in an experience of the world as a meaningful whole and of our unitedness with this whole. So it was for Kalla. This sentiment must not be confused with a teleological view or a belief in the meaning and purpose of life. There simply is no such world• plan, says Aristofilos, the artist, in one of the dialogues.9 Perhaps one could xvi INTRODUCTION say that the religious experience is one of awe for the cosmic order. It is also the source of our creative powers. With approval Kaila used to quote Goethe: "Der Mensch ist schopferisch nur so lange er religios bleibt." Goethe was another religous a-theist. It must remain a matter of speCUlation how mUCh, if anything, the religious tenor of Kaila's personality owed to the family background. Overtly Kaila reacted against his own religious upbringing and he had little but scorn for church and clergy. (Cf. above p. ix.) His a-theistic religious sentiment matured under the influence of a characteristic climate of opinion in the arts and also in philosophy (Bergson, lames, Spinozistic monism and pantheism). At the same time it answered to deep-seated features in his character and tempera• ment. In the development of these seeds, both the family traditions and the intellectual mood of the times may have had a share. It should be mentioned that the young Kaila wrote a book about Ernest Renan ([16], 1916). I know nothing about the inspiration and motivation behind it. But it cannot be just 'accident' that Kaila should have been fasci• nated by the great French scholar who was educated to be a priest but deserted the Church and vested his religious feeling in his scholarship and belief in science. Art and Science as the fulfJIlment of man's religious craving; this idea, also expressed in a well-known epigram by Goethe,lO was deeply congenial to Kaila.

6. I do not know that Kaila had ever hesitated about his vocation. But for a full decade after his graduation in 1910 he held no salaried academic post. During the war years he did research in experimental psychology. All through the decade he was active as a literary and theatre critic. He published poetry himself. For two years, from 1919 to 1921, he was employed by the Finnish National Theatre as 'dramaturge', i.e., reader of dramas and program adviser. Kaila had an acute sense for the dramatic, as those who attended his lectures or have read his dialogues can testify. It should also be mentioned that he was planning to write a drama about 'the Great Camot' , the general of the French revolutionary wars before the rise of Napoleon. He continued to entertain this plan until late in life, but never finished a manuscript. Among Kaila's contributions to literary criticism should be mentioned two early essays on luhani Aho, then already a recognized classic of Finnish prose, and a review of the young Frans Emil Sillanpiia's first novel Eliimii ja aurinko ('life and the Sun'). Sillanpaa - the only Finn so far to become a Nobel Laureate in literature - had been a student of biology and come under the influence, it appears, of the Haeckel-Ostwald monistic movement. Kaila's INTRODUCTION xvii perceptive evaluation of the book helped Sillanpaa to attain the recognition he later enjoyed as the foremost Finnish novelist in the decades between the two world wars. Kaila's later writings, particularly his book on the psychology of personality [42], also made an impact on art and literature in Finland and Scandinavia. (Cf. the motto by Ingmar Bergman used for this Introduction.) Kaila remained faithful to the standards of beauty and artistic taste which he had accepted in his youth. He did not join in with the avant garde in litera• ture, music, and painting which had its breakthrough in the 1910's and 1920's. He had little sympathy for the modernist poetry of the expressionists, and in music Sibelius remained for him the last word. With time his opinions on questions of art therefore became decidedly conservative. In this, too, he reminds me of another philosopher who was endowed with an extraordinary artistic sensibility, Wittgenstein. In an interesting memorial lecture to the Philosophical Society shortly after Kaila's death, the renowned Finnish folklorist and poet Martti Haavio treats of Kaila as a writer of poetry.11 The verse Kaila wrote as a young man, Haavio says, compares favorably with the early poetry of poets of Kaila's generation who later became acknowledged masters of the genre. Of greater interest, however, is Haavio's analysis of Kaila's language in the dialogues and in some of his printed speeches. Haavio selects passages in prose and arranges them as poems, dividing them up in lines according to the rhythm of the sentences. The trick is daring but, as far as I can judge, it succeeds. Some of the pieces have the same serene beauty which Kaila admired in 'great' litera• ture. Haavio calls the arranged poems 'cathedral hymns'. This is an allusion to the fact that 'cathedral', and also 'temple' and 'cloisters', are frequently recurring similes in Kaila's efforts to clothe in words the feeling of awe with which the all-unity or Deus sive Natura fIlled him.

7. Kaila's early research was in psychology and was mainly experimental. In fact his first major philosophic writing dates from 1925, the year when he was thirty-five. It would not, however, be right to say that Kaila was an experimental psychologist turned philosopher. In those years, and until much later, philosophy as an academic subject in Finland included psychology. Kaila's two principal teachers, Grotenfelt and Westermarck, gave courses in psychology. The former had started his scholarly career with a dissertation on the Weber-Fechner law. Westermarck was much more drawn to anthropologi• cal field-work than to abstract speculation. Whether the fact that Kaila's early work was empirical and experimental was due to the influence of a prevailing tradition or whether it reflected his own basic inclinations is more than we xviii INTRODUCTION can tell. That Kaila was a competent psychologist, both experimental and theoretical, is, I think, well established by the work he did. During his time as professor at Turku, Kaila founded a psychological laboratory, the first in Finland. When he returned to Helsinki as professor, he founded the Psychological Laboratory of Helsinki University. It was to begin with accommodated with the physiologists, but was later given premises of its own. The students specializing in psychology soon outnumbered those specializing in philosophy proper. The separation of the two subjects in academic teaching would probably have occurred earlier, had it not been for the intervention of the war. Kaila took the initiative in the founding of a chair in psychology, but it was not until after he had been appointed to the Academy of Finland and left the University that the chair was filled, in 1951. Almost all the first generation academic psychologists in the Finnish universities today have been pupils of Kaila, who can truly be said to be the founding father of psychology as an independent subject in his country. Kaila's dissertation [I 3] is an experimental study on the psychology of the will. It follows closely the investigations of Ach and Michotte. The test• persons were mostly university students. They were presented with elemen• tary problems of arithmetic and asked to decide whether they were willing to solve them - the basis for the decision being whether the problem seemed to them easy enough to be managed. The test-persons were also asked to describe in some detail how they reached this decision. Today this investi• gation seems of historic interest only. In the dissertation Kaila still adheres to an associationist-mechanist posi• tion in theoretical psychology. But he touches on a problem, the adequate solution of which points in a new direction, viz. the problem of how the subjects arrived at a 'total conception' (Gesamtauffassung) of the test situ• ation. In another experimental investigation ([18], 1918) Kaila tackles this problem with the perception of optical figures. The problem could also be described as how a Gestalt originates from scattered elements. Kaila thought he could account for the process by means of what he calls ([I8], p.23) "ideatory co-ordinations" (ideatorische Koordinationen). He also calls them "meaningful psychic mechanisms" (sinnvolle psychische Mechanismen). He still thinks of these mechanisms, however, as a special kind of association (ibid., p. 35). The results of further experimental research were embodied in a paper on patients suffering from schizophrenia ([ I 7], 1918) and in three papers on visual perception ([19], [22], [25]) from the years 1919-1923. Kaila's experimental work reached its peak and consummation in the research he INTRODUCTION xix

carried out in Vienna (cf. above, p. xii) and reported in the monograph [37] (1932) and the supplementary paper [43] (1935). The study [37] concerns the reactions of the suckling infant to the human face. How shall we understand the fact that the suckling starts to imitate the facial expressions of a human partner? Against the received opinions of associationist psychology, Kaila thought he could show that the suckling reacts to a characteristic Gestalt -quality of the part of the face where the eyes are situated. This quality is an invariant feature which the child first -learns to recognize. When the Gestalt is being 'distorted', e.g., by the covering up of one eye, 'seeking' ·reactions take place in the form of movements of the gaze of the suckling. These reactions are rudiments of intentional behavior and of what we should call mental life in the human individual. Kalla thought that he had refuted the theory according to which the reactions in question represent an innate, 'instinctive' or 'reflex', imitation of the facial expressions of the partner. The genuinely imitative reactions, in Kaila's opinion, follow later and develop from a tendency to respond to visual stimuli of a given Gestalt with movements of a similar global character. Kaila's interpretation of the early reactions of the infant to the human face and his Gestalt·theoretic explanation of imitative behavior led to a polemic exchange with Charlotte BUhler. In his reply [43] to Btihler's criticism Kaila could, in support of his opinions, cite the results obtained in a second sequence of experiments which he had carried out in Vienna in 1934. I am not competent to act as arbiter in the case. Suffice it to say here that Kaila himself, who tended to be almost excessively critical of his own work, thought his experimental study on sucklings a piece of well-conducted research worthy of lasting attention. As a study of the awakening of mental life it is, in my opinion, of interest also to philosophers.

8. Kaila also wrote ·a good many contributions to psychology in the Finnish language. They can be divided into two groups: synoptic presentations for a broader academic public and preliminary studies for strictly scholarly works. Between these two groups falls a little book, [20], called Sieluneliimii bio• logisena ilmi6nii ('Mental life as a Biological Phenomenon'). It was published in 1920. It sets in many ways the program and tenor of Kaila's subsequent research, also in philosophY, and therefore deserves some comments here. The aim of the book is to criticize the position known as vitalism in biology and psychology. Vitalism rests on an unscientific conception of causality. Kaila argues for something he calls 'the mechanistic principle'. It says that the state of a material system at time t depends in a lawful manner xx INTRODUCTION solely on the state of the system and its environment at the immediately pre• ceding time-differential. ([20], p. 10.) This principle governs all phenomena. There is no special causation valid in the realm of the mental or psychic. These ideas agree with Kaila's associationist and mechanist position in theoretical psychology at the time. (Cf. above p. xviii.) Soon after the publi• cation of [20] he came under the influence of Gestalt-theory and later on his views on causation also underwent important changes. He abandoned belief in the universal validity of 'the mechanistic principle' or, as he would have called it later in life, the Principle of Initial Causality. He wanted to supplement or even replace it by something he called Terminal Causality. (Cf. below p. xxxvi£.) He never succeeded in giving a clear account of this new notion. But he certainly did not think of it as an Ehrenrettung for vitalism. On that issue his position remained unchanged. The principle of mechanistic causation which Kaila professes in [20] must not be confused with that form of mechanism which maintains that all natural phenomena are "reducible to the movements of bodies and all natural laws to laws governing those movements". (Ibid., p. 88.) Kaila is decidedly against this reductionist view. (Ibid., p. 90ff.) Moreover, the laws of chemistry are not reducible to the laws of physics, nor are the laws of biology reducible to those of physics and chemistry. But the laws governing psychological phenomena, he thinks, are but special cases of laws of biology. On the mental level these manifest themselves as laws of association and reproduction. (Ibid., p. 50.) They reflect underlying physiological principles. (Ibid., p. 36, p. 48.) This is so because of the parallelism which, according to Kaila, exists between mental and bodily phenomena. (Cf. above p. xiv.) The alternative view, which he rejects, states that body and mind causally interact. The position Kaila here defends could be described as anti-reductionist monism. It is monistic in the sense that it does not accept a cleavage of reality in matter and spirit, and in holding that all laws governing phenomena are laws of natural science. It is anti-reductionist in that it defends the con• ceptual autonomy of chemistry in relation to physics and of biology in relation to physics and chemistry - though not the autonomy of psychology in relation to biology. With gradual modifications, Kaila remained faithful to this view. Later, under the impact of developments in microphysics and molecular chemistry, he would not have insisted on the 'autonomy' of chemistry relative to physics. For a long time, however, he insisted on the autonomy of biology in relation to the physico-chemical basis of life phenomena. He does so explicitly in [81], a paper from the year 1948. But in the end, it seems, he abandoned INTRODUCTION xxi this position too - under the impression of recent findings in biophysical science. (See below p. xxxvii.) He thus, in a sense, yielded to 'reductionism'. But the reduction was by no means in favor of a mechanistic world-view in the traditional sense. What made these concessions acceptable to Kaila was his growing conviction that the field-theoretic laws of micro-physics offered a possibility for a unified account of all natural phenomena. Unification, not reduction, is therefore the right name for Kaila's progress toward a monistic philosophy.

9. It is not possible to say exactly when Kalla was converted from traditional associationist psychology and became an ardent supporter of the Gestalt• theory. The process, presumably, was gradual. (Cf. above p. xviii.) In an early paper ([8], 1913) on fundamental conceptions in psychology he already drew attention to a tendency to put emphasis on 'wholes' and 'psychic syn• theses' at the expense of isolated psychological elements. This seems to echo influences from Bergson. However, in [13] and [20] Kaila still, as we have seen, professed adherence to associationism. In 1923 Kalla published [24], a big synoptic work called Sieluneliimiin rakenne ('The Structure of Mental Life'). Of all his writings this is the most voluminous. It is, however, neither as brilliant nor as mature as his book on the psychology of personality published eleven years later. In [24] Kaila has not yet completely abandoned his associationist position. But he is acquainted with and much appreciative of the work of Wertheimer, Kohler, and Koffka. He sees a forerunner to Gestalt-theory in William James, for whose insights rather than theories Kalla had the highest regard. I myself regard [42), Persoonallisuus ('The Human Personality') as the greatest masterpiece of Kalla's entire literary output. Its superb stylistic qualities, the wealth of material mastered, and the forceful vindication of its leading principles justify this judgment. Translations of it appeared in Swedish and Danish. The book was read, not only by many generations of psychology students in Finland and Scandinavia, but also by a good many people outside this professional circle - as, for example, the great artist whose testimony provided the motto for the present essay. I think that, notwithstanding all 'advances' in the subject, the book will always be con• sidered both informative and stimulating. Persoonallisuus is very much a vindication of the fertility of the principles of Gestalt-psychology. The Gestalt-laws are non-additive, holistic. They differ from the additive and 'meristic' laws both of classical natural science and traditional associationist psychology. The aim of holistic psychology is to xxii INTRODUCTION understand the meaningfulness of human reactions, from the elementary phenomena of our sensoric and motoric apparatus to the complex behavioral web which constitutes our personality. The purposive nature of human behavior has to be explained in terms of a 'dynamics of needs'. Stimulus and reinforcement are of little avail as explicative principles. Kaila's position has affinities with psychoanalysis. Kaila is well aware of this. On the other hand he also criticizes the Freudian notion of the unconscious. He sees in it, rightly I should think, a survival of a mechanistic way of thinking which agrees badly with Freud's own conception of the dynamics of psychological forces ([ 42], p. 200).

10. The year 1934 marks the end of an era in Kaila's life-work. It was the year of publication of his synoptic masterpiece on the psychology of personality and it was also the year of his last piece of experimental work in psychology. From now on Kaila is more exclusively philosopher. He continued, however, to direct the research of a growing multitude of empiri• cal psychologists. He contributed articles of a synoptic character to encyclo• pedias. ([76], [77], [86], and [87].) And the problems of theoretical psychology continued to occupy his mind. Later in his life his basic positions underwent some noteworthy changes. They are best studied in a longish paper in Finnish from the year 1945. Its title in translation would be 'The Gestalt-Problem, and Some Other Problems in Theoretical Psychology' ([73]). Thoughts similar to those in [73] are also expressed in two somewhat earlier articles in German for Theoria ([ 65] and [72]). In these writings from the war years a change is noticeable in Kaila's opinions toward behavioristic psychology, without his abandoning what he considered to be lasting insights of Gestalt -theory. He now often refers to his position as a Gestalt-behaviorism. 'Scientific' psychology, he says, must be behaviorist. By this he means that its aim is to give a structural description of intersubjectively observable phenomena - including phenomena of Gestalt• character. This emphasis on 'structure' and 'intersubjectivity' is connected with a criticism of attempts to give a phenomenologically satisfying descrip• tion of the Gestalt-qualities. In addition to the new behavioristic orientation we also fmd in these writings an influence from the German animal psychologists and ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Otto Kohler and the neuro-biologist von Holst. Kaila was particularly impressed by the ideas of Lorenz about innate behavior patterns resulting from evolution and about spontaneous activity in the neural system. These ideas opened up new avenues from the impasses of old-fashioned INTRODUCTION xxiii instinct psychology and reflexology. They also helped to broaden the per• spectives of a too narrow Gestalt -theory. As an adherent of a form of parallel-theory of the mental and the physical, Kaila had from the beginning been deeply interested in Wolfgang Kohler's ideas about 'physical Gestalten'. These were supposed to be non-additive neural 'wholes' answering to the experienced Gestalt-qualities. But Kaila was also always critical of Kohler's thoughts. In an early criticism of them ([ 31], 1929, p.93ff.) he tried to argue that the supposed neural equivalents are, after all, additive. In [73] he suggests a new solution to Kohler's problem. Instead of looking for neural equivalents in macro-physical inter-cellular constellations in the brain, one should look for them in micro-physical intra• cellular fields. ([73], p.79f.; also [72], p.97f.) Kaila's suggestion aims at connecting the foundations of psychology with the field·theories of atomic physics. From now on the main theme of Kaila's philosophic endeavors is the search for a unified theory embracing the micro-phenomena of physics, the neural phenomena, and the 'reflections' of the latter on the mental level in conscious experience.

11. Philosophy as an academic subject in Finland has traditionally been divided into 'theoretical' and 'practical'. (Cf. above p. x.) Kaila's subject was theoretical philosophy which, as we have seen, included psychology. He had also studied practical philosophy, which in those days included sociology as well. But he never did research in the latter fields. I think one may say that his intellectual temperament was such that he could not get deeply interested in problems of moral philosophy and still less in those of political and social philosophy. It is characteristic that he regarded the subject matters of prac• tical philosophy as in the first place of psychological interest, not logical or epistemological. In Persoonallisuus he makes several illuminating and percep• tive remarks on questions of value theory and social philosophy. The fullest statement of what might be called his position in ethics, however, is contained in the address [83] which he delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Academy of Finland in 1948. It elaborates and places in a wider context ideas which he had also expressed in a paper in Swedish [80] with the charac• teristic title 'The Central Problems of Moral Philosophy from the Standpoint of Gestalt -Psychology'. For Kaila, the core of morality was the Golden Rule or norm of .recipro• city among people. This rule has an empirical foundation in the fact that men occupy roughly 'symmetrical' positions in the field of social relationships. The moral norm, however, is an idealization of the factual situation in that it xxiv INTRODUCTION abstracts from the natural or socially conditioned inequalities which exist between men. If, within a given society, these inequalities are excessively great, the principle simply cannot function as a guiding norm or rule for the treatment of all members. The answer to the question 'Who is my neighbor?' cannot as a matter of course be 'All and everyone of the human race'. But it is a noteworthy fact that the boundaries of the community of 'neighbors', in the sense of the Golden Rule, have tended to widen in the course of history. Kaila notes that the idealization of features of empirically given social fields, which is characteristic of the norm of reciprocity in ethics, is similar to the idealizations which characterize theory formation in the sciences and also the way our perceptual apparatus prepares the ground for a concep• tualization of our experiences. This tendency to 'idealize' features of 'the given' is founded in our biological constitution and serves to facilitate our orientation in the world and to make us 'fit for survival'. It is typical of Kaila's monistic or unitary conception of reality that he should look for a common root for the perceptual, the intellectual, and the moral life of man.

12. Kaila's work in pure philosophy can conveniently be divided into three periods. They coincide, roughly, with his time as professor in Turku, with his tenure of the professorship in Helsinki, and with his years in the Academy, respectively. All the four works published in this collection belong to what here I count as the second or middle period - although the earliest of them, Der logistische Neupositivismus, was written towards the end of the Turku time, and the fourth, which is a fragment of an unfinished work, was pub• lished posthumously. The second and the third of the works published here are both named in a sub-title 'Contributions to Logical Empiricism'. During the beginning and the end periods, Kaila was essentially a lonely researcher who w'ent his own way and could not be classified with this or that movement or school. His early search for a philosophic position took him, literally, to the Vienna Circle. In the last ten to fifteen years of his life he was moving away from the position he had thus gained. He did not even, like so many former logical positivists and empiricists, wish to merge into the broader mainstream of 'analytical philosophy' . He positively disliked the label analytic. His final philosophy was to be synthetic, a philosophical unification of the findings and theories of modern science, one could say. The same had been his aim during the first of the three periods which I have here dis• tinguished. That period ended in two works with characteristic titles. One, strictly scholarly, was called Beitriige zu einer synthetischen Philosophie [31]; the other, intended for a broader academic public, had the title Nykyinen INTRODUCTION xxv maailmankiisitys [32] which means in English 'The Contemporary View of the World'. In the third period Kaila often spoke of his work as a Naturphilo• sophie, therewith alluding to the German tradition of Romanticism. Kalla the philosopher was very much a self-made man. Neither his univer• sity teachers nor the impressions from his few foreign travels as a young man were, as far as I can see, of much formative importance. In retrospect, the years in Turku seem to have been terribly lonely. He must have read an immense amount then. And there were a few personal contacts of import• ance. First among them should be mentioned the brothers Frithiof and Rolf Nevanlinna, famous mathematicians, Kaila's slightly younger contemporaries. The brothers frequently visited Kaila in Turku 12, and Kaila travelled to Helsinki to attend lectures by Rolf Nevanlinna. Kaila's occupations with the foundations of mathematics and with contemporary physical theory evidently owes much to his association with these two highly gifted and versatile men. Another person to mention here is Hjalmar Eklund, actuary in an insurance company in Turku. Eklund was the first Finn to do work in mathematical logic. He had published a book on Russell's antinomyl3, and it was he who introduced Kaila to the world of Principia Mathematica. Kaila told me of his high regard for this man, whose ultimate fate was to emigrate to the Soviet Union and perish in the great purges. Uuno Saarnio also lived in Turku at that time, whom Kaila knew and who was the first in Finland to present a doctoral thesis in logic.t4 The period in Kaila's life prior to his logical empiricist position resulted in four scholarly works in rapid succession: [27], [28], [30], and [31] of the Bibliography. In addition to them there is Nykyinen maailmankiisitys. In his Preface to this last, Kaila tells the reader that the book is an attempt to present, in systematic form, the world view at which the author had arrived after a decade of research in "logic, psychology, and philosophy of nature". For two reasons, he says, he calls this philosophy a "contemporary view of the world". The first is that it is based on the findings of "modern scientific research in physics, biology, and psychology". The second is that it has affinities with "some important trends of thought in contemporary philos• ophy". He mentions, in particular, Reichenbach's philosophy of space and time, Russell's The Analysis of Matter, Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt, the founders of Gestalt-psychology Kohler and Wertheimer, and Goldstein's Die Lokalisation in der Grosshimrinde. It is probably not unfair to say that none of Kaila's works from this period contains contributions of lasting value to philosophy. But they are impressive as a testimony of a philosopher's lonely search for a well-formed position. xxvi INTRODUCTION Der Satz vom Ausgleich des Zufalls ([ 27], 1925) and Die Prinzipien der Wahrscheinlichkeitslogik ([28], 1926), as the titles indicate, deal with prob• lems of induction and probability. - It is characteristic that Kalla wanted his endeavors in [27] to be seen against the background of a shift in standpoints which was taking place in physics. He is thinking of the replacement of theories of a strictly causal or deterministic character, such as the dif• ferential equations of classical mechanics, by theories of a probabilistic or statistical nature. Strict causality, Kaila thinks (ibid., p. 177ff.), rests on ficti• tious assumptions about closedness and definiteness of systems in nature. But experience has an infinite openness or 'depth' (ibid., p. 182) which a fully developed exact science must recognize. Therefore physical theory has to be probabilistic. The range of natural phenomena which pro~abilistic theories can account for are, according to Kaila, subject to a very general 'law' which he calls the Principle of Contingency or the Cancelling out of Chance (Ausgleich des Zufalls). It is related to the asymptotic principles of prob• ability mathematics known as Laws of Great Numbers. The mathematical laws, however, are analytic; the principle of the Cancelling out of Chance, Kaila thinks, is synthetic. It is a warrant of the applicability of probability calculations to the real world, one could say. Kaila's formulation of the principle is peculiar. He connects it with the notion of independence. The principle then says, roughly (cf. ibid., p. 41), that coincidences between independent elements tend, in the long run, to dis• tribute equally over a set of possible outcomes. The precise meaning of this eludes me in spite of the examples which Kaila gives (ibid., p. 45ff.). There is also an obvious objection to the idea that this is a synthetic fact of nature. For, is not the cancelling out of chance itself a warrant of the factual inde• pendence of the coincident phenomena? If this is so, the statement that the outcomes will tend to occ'ur with equal frequency is analytic. Kaila is aware of the objection and tries to meet it. (Ibid., p. 69ff.) [27] acknowledges indebtedness to Edgar Zilsel's book Das Anwendungs• problem (I916). It too deals with the problem of the Cancelling out of Chance. Zilsel, however, held the principle in question to be analytic. Among other writers on probability from whose works Kaila had drawn inspiration should be mentioned, above all, Johannes von Kries. His Prinzipien der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung (1886) already had the status of a classic on the subject. Two contemporary writers who meant much to Kaila are Keynes and Reichenbach. To Meinong's magistral work mer Moglichkeit und Wahrschein• lichkeit (1915), however, Kaila took a critical and negative attitude. (Cf. [28], p. 21ff.) INTRODUCTION xxvii On the question of the nature of probability Kaila partly agrees and partly disagrees with Keynes. ([28], p.9 ff.) He is critical of what he considers a streak of 'psychologism' or 'subjectivism' in Keynes's view of probability as a degree of belie/. But he agrees with Keynes in holding that probability is a logical relation between propositions. Since the terms of the relation, the propositions, are true or false, one can say that "any probability is a logical function of certain truths" (ibid., p. 32). Truth-value, in other words, is more basic than probability. Of interest seems to me what Kaila says in [28] about the probability of inductive generalizations (laws of nature). This probability is not, he thinks, a function simply of the multitude and features of confirming instances. It depends on analogies between the generalization under consideration and other members of a class of hierarchically arranged inductions. The idea seems baSically sound. It is not new in Kalla, but he gives to it an original twist. He did not carry its formal elaboration very far, neither in [28] nor in later writings, where he occasionally alludes to it. It is, however, as a first effort on Kalla's part to articulate a general posi• tion in philosophy that [28] is most worth attention. Kalla calls his position - logical empiricism. ([28], p. 35.) It should be remembered that the year of publication of [28] was 1926. According to Kaila's logical empiricist view in [28], all knowledge which is not formal (logical, mathematical) is based on experiential data which, in the last resort, are given to us hic et nunc in sense• experience. The 'tie' between the basis and the higher strata of empirical knowledge is probabilistic. The logic of knowledge which is to replace tradi• tional epistemology is a probability logic (ibid., p. 34). In order to possess a probability, however, an empirical proposition must imply something which can be given in sensory experience (ibid., p. 152). Kaila calls this requirement the Principle of Possible Experience (Prinzip der Erfahrbarkeit). It is a con• sequence, he says (ibid.), of his view of the probability relation as subsisting between a hypothesis and some given truths. Kaila does not claim absolute novelty for his empiristic principle. He sees a forerunner of it in Leibniz's principe de I 'observabilite and in some thoughts which guided Einstein in the construction of relativity theory. He also refers to what Johannes von Kries had called the Principle of Interpretation in his Logik (l916) - a nowadays undeservedly neglected work. Kaila recognizes the affinity of his standpoint to positivism (ibid., p. 159ff.). But he also notes an important difference. Positivism, he says (p. 159), confuses the fact that every proposition about reality must imply ~ome experiential consequences with the requirement that the proposition should be xxviii INTRODUCTION about objects given in direct experience. Therefore traditional positivism has been hostile to the atomic hypothesis. Kaila is here thinking of the Mach• Boltzmann controversy over the 'reality' of atoms. To tltis reductionist version of positivism Kaila was always strongly opposed. The best and most forceful expression of his criticism of positivism and defense of realism in the philosophy of physics is found in a much later work by him, iJber den physikalischen Realitiitsbegriff ([61]. 1941) printed in translation in this volume. Next in order among Kaila's early philosophical works comes Problerne der Deduktion ([30], 1928). Its most noteworthy feature, it seems to me, is that it testifies to the author's acute awareness of the then major issues in the philosophy of mathematics: the controversies between intuitionism (and semi-intuitionism) and logicism, on the one hand, and between intuitionism and formalism, on the other hand. Kaila sides, on the whole, with logicism and formalism but tries to do justice to the criticism of Poincare (of Russell) and of Brouwer (of Hilbert). There is no difference between the nature of deductive ties in logic and in mathematics ([30], p. 58). Deduction is 'tauto• logical transformation' in the sense that the content of the conclusions is implicit in the premises. As an inferential instrument, the principle of math• ematical induction is on a par with other principles of deductive proof. Yet, Kaila says (ibid., p.58), "mathematics is not a part of logic". When from logic we proceed to mathematics, we have to introduce special inferential principles concerning orderings. The way Kaila tries to argue for this dif• ference between logic and mathematics is not very successful, however. He makes use of a rather obscure idea to the effect that "not all formally (i.e., logically) possible types of ordering are 'meaningful' (sind sinnvoll denkbar)" (ibid., p. 44). Of greater interest seems to me Kaila's proposed solution of the set-theoretic antinomies by means of an Axiom der logischen Bestimmtheit (ibid., p. 6lff.) or requirement that the objects of thought be independent of the thought itself. Kaila thinks that the paradoxes originate through a vio• lation of this principle. The most ambitious and comprehensive work of the Turku-period is Beitriige zu einer synthetischen Philosophie ([ 31], 1928). In its first chapter Kaila reaffirms his view from [27] that probabilistic, and not deterministic, causality governs the course of nature. He also reaffirms the empiricist position taken in [28] concerning the foundation of empirical knowledge in sense-experience. The task of a 'synthetic philosophy', as Kaila sees it, is to establish the truth of a unitary view of reality - much in the spirit of the 'monistic vision' which had dawned upon him in his early youth. (ef. above, INTRODUCTION xxix p. xiif.) This synthetic endeavor is, in [31], inspired by Gestalt·theory which here for the first time enters Kaila's philosophy with full force. Gestalt-theory, Kaila says ([31], p. 91), is much more than a position in experimental psychology. It is the germ of a monistic philosophy which embraces inorganic nature as well as life and mental phenomena. Kaila calls it (ibid.) a "monism from above". This is an allusion to the non-additive charac• ter of the Gestalten. They are wholes governing their parts in the sense that the law for the whole cannot be derived from laws about the parts considered in isolation. The whole, therefore, is not a mere 'sum' of its parts. This point is related to the theory of emergence, entertained by lloyd Morgan and others - a fact of which Kaila was aware. (Ibid., p. 115.) The program for a synthetic philosophy, however, is loaded with problems. One cannot say that Kaila, in [31], had been very successful in coping with them. Fundamental unclarities remain. Attempts to remove them constitute some main themes of thought which engaged Kaila to the very end of his life. The great difficulty for Kaila's monism, here and later, resides in its anti• reductionist character. (Cf. above p. xxf.). Though he was an adherent of psychophysical parallelism, he wanted to say neither that mind and matter are 'identical' nor that mental and physical events are parallel chains of dif• ferent nature. He approvingly quotes (ibid., p. 78) the 'neutral stuff' monism of Avenarius and of Bertrand Russell (of that period). He is looking for con• cepts "beyond the cleavage in 'mind' and 'matter' ", he says (ibid.). But in which sense can the neutrality or unity of the world-stuff be maintained? One idea which he entertains in [31] is that from the point of view of quality everything is mental (Geist), but from the point of view of relation or struc• ture everything is material. He also tentatively suggests (ibid., p. 79) that the qualitative or phenomenal is a field-state (Feldzustand) co-ordinated to pro• cesses in the 'living brain'. The phenomenal and the physical are, as it were, two modes in which this field-state exists. As may be seen, the mind-body dualism is for Kaila closely tied up with the contrast quality -structure. In [31], and more clearly formulated in some later publications such as, [65], Kaila holds a view according to which science deals with relations or structures only, and not with qualities. (Cf. above p. xxiiL). This echoes thoughts of Schlick and Carnap. But there is no clear indication that Kaila had got his ideas from those authors. If there is parallelism between the phenomenal and the physical, then it would seem that there ought to exist non-additivity also on the physical side. Kohler's theory of 'physical Gestalten' in the brain had been an attempt to vindicate this idea. Kaila, however, did not consider the attempt successful. xxx INTRODUCTION (Cf. above p. xxiiL). Where then, on the physical side, are the non-additive wholes to be found? Kaila discusses the question in [31J without being able to suggest a definite answer.

13. The four works by Kalla which are included in the present volume are his main contributions to the trend in philosophy championed by the Vienna Circle. It is best known under the name Logical Positivism. This name is not used, however, in the program pamphlet in which the Circle in 1929 pro• claimed its existence to the world.15 The alignment to empiricism and posi• tivism is acknowledged 16, but the ethos of the movement was chiefly in that it stood for a 'scientific' philosophy or world-view (Wissenschaftliche Weltauf• fassung). Science, moreover, was a 'unified science' (Einheitswissenschaft). Both catchwords had a strong appeal to Kalla. It is perhaps not possible to clarify completely the history of the name 'logical positivism'. Probably it has several independent, more or less simul• taneous, origins. Kalla, in [34], called the position of Carnap in the Aufbau 'logistic neopositivism'. Kalla's book appeared in 1930. Another Scandinavian, the Swede Ake Petzall, who also visited Vienna, called the philosophy of the circle 'logistic positivism' in a pamphlet published in 1931 P In a retrospec• tive essay Herbert Feigl18 traces the origin of the name to a paper by himself and Blumberg. 19 Kalla never used the term 'logical positivism' for his position. As noted above (p. xxvii), in 1926 Kaila had already coined for it the name 'logical empiricism'. This term was later also adopted by many who worked in the tradition of the Vienna Circle, but who perhaps thought, like Kaila, that the label 'positivism' was too strongly suggestive of a trend in nineteenth-century philosophy or of reductionist tendencies from which they wanted to dis• sociate their own position. KaiIa's writings from this middle period of his active life center around what might be called the Problem of Constitution (of empirical knowledge). This is basically the same problem as the one with which Carnap had dealt in his great book Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Kalla's work in the area started with a critical examination of Carnap's Au/bau. ([34], 1930.) His own original contributions, in [46], [61], and [97], attack the problem from a somewhat different angle than Carnap's. Kaila is chiefly interested in how the following three layers of reality are conceptually related: the phenomenal level of sense-experience, the physical level of macroscopic things with their qualities and relations, and the 'physico-scientific' (physikalisch) level of such things as, for example, atoms or electro-magnetic fields. INTRODUCTION xxxi I shall not here try to summarize the ideas of the works of Kaila which are published in this volume. The works in question will speak for themselves. I shall only say that I find their main theme interesting and Kaila's treatment of it solid as well as original. Their philosophic value is, I think, enhanced by the fact that he was also a schooled psychologist. I hope their re-publication will contribute to a revival of interest in problems of epistemology which, though of obvious importance, have long been neglected. Kaila's work never received much attention - not even his writings from this particular period. (CL below, p. xxxix.) In 1928-30 he corresponded with Carnap. A few interesting letters remain. They show that Kaila had already studied the Aufbau in the year of its appearance (1928) and had then written something which evidently was a first version of [34]. When [34] was published, Carnap and Hempel tried to defend some views in the Aufbau of which Kaila was critical. I do not think, however, they were able to meet Kaila's criticisms quite successfully. To [46] Carnap only reacted with a friendly letter. The book provoked some discussion by Petziill in Theoria concerning the constitution of physical space. Kaila replied to this in [53]. [61) was published during the war when Finland was isolated, and [97] only appeared after his death.

14. As a protagonist of a unitary view of the world, Kaila naturally also adhered to the idea of the unity of science. But he was not very much inter• ested in questions of scientific methodology. His monism had an epistemo• logical and metaphysical motivation; it was not basically a methodological monism. More than by the 'unity of ~cience' idea of the positivists, he was attracted by the ideas of a mathesis universalis and scientia generalis of the great representatives of European rationalism, Descartes and Leibniz. There is, however, a single paper by Kaila ([35], 1930) which deals with the con• trast between 'explanation' and 'understanding' and the alleged methodo• logical dualism separating the natural sciences and the Geisteswissenschaften. As could be expected, Kaila argues against the claims of the 'humanists' that Verstehen or understanding is a method peculiar to the human sciences and different from causal explanation in the sciences of nature. The specific characteristic of the phenomena which the humanities study is, in Kaila's opinion, their intentionality. He thinks, however, that intentions and motives are causal factors of 'in principle' the same logical nature as those which are at work in nature. Many years later (in [81], 1948) Kaila once again returned to the question of the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences. He xxxii INTRODUCTION argues that, in the realm of human action and social phenomena, there are limits to predictability which are inherent in the subject-matter of a science of man though not in the subject-matter of natural science. The objects of prediction in human study can intentionally either fulml or upset a predic• tion of which these objects as 'subjects' may have knowledge. The notion of a 'law' therefore has a different sense in the human and in the natural sciences. For this reason also, the sphere of human phenomena is conceptually irreducible to (,purely') biological phenomena, the study of man not reducible to biology. For different, though analogous reasons, the life phenomena are not reducible to the phenomena of inorganic nature - biology not reducible to physics and chemistry. This paper is, I think, the best statement we have of Kalla's anti-reductionism. How this is reconcilable with the monism which he also professed is not easy to see. I think it is right to say that Kaila never succeeded in relaxing the tension between the two poles which in equal measure attracted his thinking. (Cf. above p. xxf.)

15. Apart from the early publication [30] (cf. above p. xxviiL), Kaila did not make independent contributions to logic or the foundations of mathematics. But he was the first in Finland to introduce mathematical logic into academic teaching. From a letter from Carnap to Kaila of September 1929 we can gather that Kaila had ordered ten copies of Carnap's recently published Abriss der Logistik to be sent to Turku, evidently for use in his class. Carnap'sAbriss was the set textbook in logic when I studied with Kaila in Helsinki in the mid-1930's. There exist several later papers by Kaila which can be classified as belong• ing to philosophical logic. [ 41] (I933) is an examination of the verifiability thesis of the logical positivists. Kaila objects to the equivocation of meaning and verifiability. He makes a distinction between the reducibility of concepts to an empirical basis and the reducibility of propositions. He rejects the reducibility thesis for propositions, but accepts it for concepts. Kaila was then of the opinion that all empirical concepts are capable of explicit definition in the terms of perceptual concepts. It therefore came as something of a shock to Kaila, when Carnap thought he had shown in Testability and Meaning that disposition concepts do not admit of explicit definition in perceptual terms. In spite of his general anti• reductionist leanings, Kaila was seriously worried by the possibility that one might have to abandon the method of explicit definition as a sole means of introducing new concepts into empirical science. He exchanged letters with INTRODUCTION xxxiii Carnap about this. In [56] he proposed an explicit definition for disposition concepts. (Ibid., p. 206ff.) The proposal, however, does not remove Carnap's difficulty - as was pointed out by Anders Wedberg in a review of [56] for The Journal of Symbolic Logic. Kaila acknowledged his shortcoming when in [74] he once again returned to the problem. He finished by leaving it open - awaiting, as he says ([74], p. 98), somebody who with the tools of logic could give an adequate formalization of the 'if then' -relation. In a letter to Kaila (27.5 .1937), Carnap had hinted that modal concepts might be needed to cope with the problems in this area. In [47], a paper delivered at the International Congress of Philosophy in Prague in 1934, Kaila discusses certain doubts about the meaningfulness of general propositions. Such doubts had been expressed by logical posi• tivists in view of the fact that general propositions cannot be conclusively verified. Kaila thought that the doubts were not well founded. One must not make conclusive verifiability a warrant of meaningfulness of propositions. Kaila sees the warrant of meaning in the possibility of defining the non-logical concepts in any empirical proposition in terms of testable basic notions. (Cf. above.)

16. On the eve of the war Kaila published another of his meritorious synoptic works [56]. It was called 'Human Knowledge, what it is and what it is not'. The original is Finnish; a Swedish translation was published the same year. For a long time the book was used as a university text in Finland and Scan• dinavia. The work does not address laymen and students only. It is also aimed at being "a systematic introduction to 'logical empiriCism' ". As such it was and still is, I think, the best of its kind. In Kaila's literary output it is second only to Persoonallisuus in elegance of style and mastery of a wealth of material. The book is divided into three sections. The first is largely historical and discusses some main traits of man's search for knowledge. The second deals with logical and mathematical truth and presents the elements of the meta• mathematics of the Hilbert school. The third treats of empirical truth, the structure of physical theory, and the problem of other minds. It is perhaps in the first part that the author's grip on the subject is most personal and novel. Kaila here introduces two key-concepts of his later think• ing: invariance and rationalization. The second he also called idealization. (See below p. 162.) The human search for knowledge aims at the discovery of invariances in the flux of phenomena. Concept formation and theory building are high level manifestations of this trend. In fact our perceptual apparatus xxxiv INTRODUCTION already works according to the same principle. At all levels, finding invari• ances involves an idealization of the raw material of experience. Kaila contrasts an Aristotelian and a Galilean tradition in science. The former rests content with thing-like invariances. The latter looks for relational or structural invariances, for laws of nature in a modern sense of the word. In Aristotle's theory of knowledge and science Kaila saw archaic elements of Greek thinking reflected. In comparison, Plato was 'modern'. Kaila used to emphasize that it had been in the spirit of a revival of Platonism during the Renaissance that an exact science of nature was born. Kaila, in [56], summarized the position of logical empiricism in four 'theses': 1. There are no synthetic a priori truths; everything which is true independently of experience is analytic. 2. The 'real content' of a synthetic sentence is the sum total of testable sentences which it implies. 3. It must be possible to translate every theory with real content into the language of human experience; this language can be either the ip-language of sense-experi• ence or the [-language used for describing macroscopic things and processes. 4. Sentences about a subject's immediate experience are, from the point of view of real content, equivalent to certain sentences about states in the sub• ject's body (brain). In the works [46], [61] and [97], here published, the reader can study in further detail Kaila's stand on the questions of testability and translatability and also the changes which his position underwent. Here I shall comment only on the fourth thesis above, viz. the Thesis of Logical Behaviorism. This thesis was often thought to imply that the choice between the two basic positions in constitution theory, viz. phenomenalism and physicalism, was a matter of convention or 'choice oflanguage' for a complete description of reality. This was already clearly stated by Carnap in the Aufbau. The idea, however, can be true only on condition that the equivalences between certain sentences of the [-language and others of the ip-Ianguage are analytical, i.e., logically true. Here is a problem which worried Kaila. In [34] (see below p. 17f.) he had already doubted whether the equivalences are analytical. In [46] and [56] the problem is being slurred over. But in publications from the war years it is urgent. In 1942 Kaila published, in Finnish, a long paper ([62]) on 'The Logic of Knowledge of Reality' and, in German, a paper ([ 65]) on 'Physical· ism and Phenomenalism'. With a certain right they can be said to mark a return to his preoccupation in [31] with the problem of monism which, as we have seen, was the main theme of Kaila's thinking. Kaila is now emphatic ([ 62] , p. 81 ff.; [65], p. 116ff.) about the synthetic INTRODUCTION xxxv character of the equivalences which are supposed to 'bridge the gap' between the phenomenal and the physical. They are not 'equivalences of meaning'. It is not possible, Kaila says ([62], p. 87), to state in a physical language every• thing we call knowledge. The ip-language contains a residue which the {• language cannot express. This is connected with the fact that the phenomenal language is self-centered. In a sense, there is not just one ip-language, but as many such languages as there are subjects who speak them. ([ 62], p. 88.) The physical language, on the other hand, is one. It is intersubjective and therefore it is the language of science. It follows that a scientific psychology has to be behaviorist. (Cf. above p. xxii.) From the scientific, inter-subjective point of view, talk about sensations and other mental phenomena must be couched in behavioral terms which exhaust its 'real content' . .. 'Physicalism' is not a philosophy in the sense of ~ Weltanschauung", Kaila says ([ 65], p. 125). It is a method - the method of 'strict science'. Yet not all knowledge can be 'strict science' (ibid.). In the two publications under discussion Kalla thus arrives at a 'two-language philosophy' as he also calls it. ([62], p. 89.) For a complete description of every possible object ofknowl• edge both the physical and the phenomenal language are needed. The {• language describes structures; only the ip-language can capture the qualitative aspects of reality. Such a two-language standpoint, however, is definitely unsatisfactory for one whose craving is for monism. This Kaila soon realized. After the paper of 1942 his search for a monistic philosophy takes a new turn. We already (above p. xxiii) noted Kaila's idea that the field theories of microphysics might help solve the problem of the Gestalt in psychology. Analogously, he thought that these theories also gave the clue to the problem how 'quality' is related to 'structure', the 'phenomenal' to the 'physical'. It is not a coincidence that Kaila's turn to microphysics happened Simultaneously in his epistemology and in his theoretical psychology. On the epistemological side this happened in papers [62] and [65] of the year 1942, on the psycho• logical side in the somewhat later publications [72] and [73]. (See above p. xxiif.)

17. It was natural that Kaila, at this stage in his development, should plunge into the problems of pure physical theory before returning to his big syn• thetic venture. This 'detour', if it can be called by that name, lasted roughly from 1942 to 1952. Considering that Kaila never lost sight of the problems which he had left unsolved in epistemology and theoretical psychology it is, however, more natural to regard his entire work from the mid40s to the end xxxvi INTRODUCTION of his life as one big, unfmished, gigantomakhia with the difficulties that stood in the way of his final erection of a monistic system of philosophy. In 1943 Kaila published [70], a long preliminary study in Finnish on 'The Philosophic Problems of Quantum Theory in the Light of Logical Empiricism'. It has as a motto a paraphrase in Finnish from the Preface to Dirac's The Principles of Quantum Mechanics: "All important things in our experience appear as the invariants of certain transformations." Kaila's search was for the invariant of transformation which would recon• cile the particle and the wave interpretations of microphenomena within a unified theory. The paper ends with a remark on the possibility of applying the mathematical apparatus of wave-mechanics to an analysis of the Gestalt• qualities of perceptions and other mental phenomena. Kaila thought ([70], p. 126f.) that the quantum theoretic interpretation of these qualities as 'vibrations' in the neural system might yield a physicalist explanation of the psychophysical Gestalt-laws. (ef. above p. xxiii.) In 1950 Kaila returned to the same problems in a monograph in German [85] called Zur Metatheorie der Quantenmechanik. In the Preface the author declares that the book supersedes all his previous writings on quantum physics. A novelty in comparison with the earlier paper [70] is the attention he now devotes to the categories of space and time and the 'collapse' of the classical spatio-temporal framework in the micro-dimensions. (eL also [61], below p. 218.) In [90], the paper from 1953 in which he autobiographically recalls his early 'monistic vision' (above p. xii), Kaila is ripe for renouncing the two• language solution which ten years earlier he had suggested for the problem of the relation between the phenomenal and the physical, quality and struc• ture. The emergent, non-additive quality of the Gestalt, he now says, is a kind of illusion. There is no such thing. The Gestalt is not one quality but a dif• fuse awareness "in an integral manner" (ibid., p. 272) of a complex structure, the further analysis of which is a matter for physics and will ultimately take us to the field-notions of microphysical theory.

18. We do not know exactly when Kaila's mind conceived the grand idea of terminal causality which he thought would eventually solve all his difficulties. (ef. above p. xx.) It is not mentioned in the writings on quantum mechanics from 1943 or 1950. As far as I can see, it occurs for the first time in [93], Terminalkausalitiit in der Atomdynamik which appeared in 1956. There is, however, an interesting anticipation of it in the paper [88] on 'The Problem of Life' a few years earlier. Here the problem is whether there exists a INTRODUCTION xxxvii physico-chemical explanation of life. Characteristic of life phenomena are ([88J, p.60f.), on the one hand, their 'holistic' nature and, on the other hand, their purposiveness or teleology. Kalla cites some biologists and bio• chemists (Lecomte du Notiy, Staudinger, Troll) who had expressed the view that there are 'philosophic arguments' against a physico-chemical theory of life. Kaila thinks their arguments mistaken. The notions of 'steady state' and 'autocatalysis' provide keys to explaining self-regulation and purposive• ness. The 'basis of life' is constituted by autocatalytic, 'open' systems which are in an equilibrium of the 'steady state'-type with their environment. The nature of such systems, Kaila thinks, has to be accounted for in quantum• theoretic terms. Kaila's reactions to cybernetics, which was coming into fashion in the 1950's, were hostile. This can be seen from another article of his ([89], 1952) on life phenomena. In Kaila's opinion cybernetics, as an effort to understand these phenomena, was a relapse to an obsolete 'mechanistic' position. Kaila's objection could be put as follows: The simulation mechan• isms and self-regulating machines studied by cybernetics are composed of parts from which the 'holistic' and 'purposive' characteristics of life are missing. In the living organism, on the other hand, these characteristics penetrate down to the micro-level and must be understood on the basis of a theory of microphenomena. Ufe requires for its explanation a quantum biology. It is in quantum theory that physics, chemistry, and biology meet and become unified. (Cf. above p. xxi.) In the mid-1950's Kaila began to plan a work in three parts. The first part was going to deal with the atom, i.e., with the micro-world of physics, the second with the living organism, and the third with the brain. The work was to bear the title Terminalkausalitiit als die Grundlage eines unitarischen Naturbegriffs, eine naturphilosophische Untersuchung. Only the first volume, [93J, was finished and published. For the second, Terminalkausalitiit in der Biodynamik he had prepared a great number of notes, but no complete manuscript. The third volume he would presumably have called Terminal• kausalitiit in der Neurodynamik. It is to be deplored that Kaila nowhere gives a very clear description of what he means by 'terminal causality'. Its counterpart, 'initial causality', is easier to characterize. Kaila's own definition in [20] will serve the purpose. (See above p. xx.) "'Terminalkausalitiit''', he says in [93J, p. 7, "ist eine allgemeine Bezeichnung flir eine ... Gesetzmiissigkeit des Geschehens, ftir welches nicht so sehr die Anfangsbedingungen (lnitialbedingungen) als die. Grenzbedingungen, Randbedingungen, Endbedingungen massgebend sind." xxxviii INTRODUCTION

It has nothing to do with "mystic or metaphysical finalism" (ibid.). The pre• liminary characterization will be made more precise in the sequel, he adds. I am afraid the promise is not fulftlled. I find, nevertheless, interesting and suggestive the account Kaila gives of atomic phenomena and how the two 'pictures' of them, the particle and the wave model, are to be reconciled from the point of view of his unifying conception. Of the value of his ideas as a contribution to the philosophy of physics I can have no opinion of my own. Simultaneously with the Terminalkausalitiit Kaila was also planning a synoptic work in Finnish, Hahmottuva maailma. The title is perhaps best rendered by 'The World as a Structured Whole'. Its sub-title was going to be 'Outlines of a terminal-causalist conception of nature'. The planned scope of the work, however, was even broader than the titles indicate. One chapter in it was the essay which is here published in English translation under the name The Perceptual and the Conceptual Components o{Everyday Experience. Its topic is constitution theory and it continues Kaila's work in [46] and [61]. It seems to me that Kaila here succeeded in giving to his thoughts an improved statement. Therefore it was considered appropriate to publish this chapter of the unfmished work separately. The translation is not from the Finnish original, but from a German translation by Dr. H. Henning which was published in 1962. [97] [97] is the only part of the planned synoptic work which Kaila himself regarded as ready for printing. But there existed a typescript also of the two preceding chapters. Their content was semi-historical, like the introductory part of [56J. The chapters following the one on perception would have dealt with the physical world. The author intended once again to take up for dis• cussion the problems of space and time and relativity, in addition to questions of microphysics. When working on this part of the project he found it neces• sary to dig ever deeper into the problems of space-time and eventually to clarify them in a separate publication. This ([96]) he wrote in Finnish. Its title means 'The Einstein-Minkowski Theory of Invariance; Investigations into its Logico-Epistemological Nature and Significance'. Writing [96] kept Kaila busy during the greater part of 1957. The author did not live to see it appear in print, one year after its completion. In the last year of his life Kaila seems to have been working alternately on Terminalkausalitiit in der Biodynamik and Hahmottuva maailma. But further side-tracking became necessary, and in the Spring of 1958 he completed a paper on wave-mechanics [98J. It was published posthumously together with [97J. Kaila fell in the middle of a gigantic battle. The task he had set for himself INTRODUCTION xxxix was enormous, the difficulties next to superhuman. One can safely predict that he would never have won the battle. But there was no sign of resignation or retreat. There is something tragic but also great about his relentless wrest• ling with the problems of philosophy to the very last day of his life. Kaila's book [20] of 1920 has as a motto a sentence from Mach's Mechanics: "Die hochste Philosophie des Naturforschers besteht darin eine unvollendete Weltanschauung zu ertragen."20 To endure an unfinished world• view may be the destiny of all deep and serious thinking. To accept this is doubly difficult for one whose craving for a unified theory of all-nature never yields to compromise with recalcitrant facts.

19. Neither as a psychologist nor as a philosopher did Kaila have a strong influence on the progress of research outside his own country. I think one can say that he was well-known to logical positivists and empiricists of his own generation and held by them in esteem. In Scandinavia he had a relatively large reading public. A noteworthy acknowledgement of indebtedness to Kaila is by A.l. Ayer.21 The reference is to Kaila's constitution theory in [46] for the physical world on the basis of the phenomenal one. A contributory reason for Kaila's influence not transcending the national borders was, obviously, that he published very little abroad. In his early years he published a few papers in leading German journals of psychology. In the 1930's he contributed reviews to Erkenntnis, and some papers of his appeared in the Scandinavian Theoria. But his early philosophic work is safely buried in the Annals of the Finnish University of Turku and the circle of their readers is certain to have been very limited. Much the same holds true for the latt:r works which were published in the Acta Philosophica Fennica and in Ajatus, the yearbook of the Philosophical Society of Finland. The work of his which I should consider most mature, viz. the one here translated under the title On the Concept of Reality in Physical Science, was published in 1941 when Finland was completely cut off from academic contact with the outside world. I am afraid it has so far found very few readers anywhere. In Finland, Kaila's influence was profound. We mentioned above (p. xviii) his importance to psychology in his country. In this field he was working practically from scratch. His place in Finnish philosophy stands o~t against the background of the traditions of the subject in Finland. As in so many other countries, Hegel and Hegelianism dominated Finnish philosophy in the mid-nineteenth century. The outstanding figure was 10han Vilhelm Snellman (1806-1881), a Hegelian of the 'moderate left'. (Cf. above p. xv, note 8.) From the 1870's the influence of German idealism was waning. xl INTRODUCTION Snellman's successors were eclectic philosophers with some leaning towards empiricism. The 1880's was the decade of 'naturalism' in Scandinavia and its spirit found a very prominent representative in Finland in Edvard Westermarck. Westermarck's orientation was Anglo-Saxon and he spent a great part of his rich and varied life abroad, as professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and doing fieldwork in cultural anthropology in Morocco. Though Westermarck also enjoyed great prestige in his own country, his actual influ• ence on Finnish philosophy was next to nil. (In sociology and the study of religion he had important Finnish pupils and followers.) Thus, Westermarck notwithstanding, philosophy in Finland definitely lacked a distinctive profile until Kaila came on the scene and became an influence in the 1930's. In this situation Kaila effected a complete change. He gave to the subject an academic prestige which it had not enjoyed since the days of Snellman, if ever, in Finland. He introduced the study of modern logic; he championed with success the philosophy of the Vienna Circle; and he became himself the founder of something which may merit the name of a school - at least it deserves to be called a tradition. It is noteworthy that he attracted many excellent pupils from mathematics and the sciences: Oiva Ketonen, who eventually succeeded him as professor in Helsinki, and Erik Stenius, only to mention two. I studied with Kaila from the very beginning. It was chiefly through these three pupils that Kaila's influence on philosophy in Finland was cemented and transmitted to succeeding generations.

Helsinki, Finland G. H. VON WRIGHT

NOTES

1 Ingmar Bergman, Wild Strawberries, translated from the Swedish by Lars Malmstrom and David Kushner. Lorrimer Publishing, London, 1970, p. 12. 2 Kaila's Finnish seems to me to possess superb stylistic qualities. The same cannot be said without reserve of his Swedish. One is struck by the richness of his Swedish vocabu• lary and by the colorful imagery. But his Swedish sometimes sounds overly rhetorical and untamed in passages which, had he written them in Finnish, would have sounded passionately serious. This reflects differences in the 'spirit' of the two languages - but also, I think, reveals something characteristically Finnish in the spiritual stature of Kaila. 3 We can gather this from [71), p. 104£, where the same episode is described, though without explicit mention of the 'monistic vision'. 4 In this Kaila is not alone among prominent Finnish intellectuals and men of science. Cf. Rolf Nevanlinna, Muisteltua ('Recollections'), Otava, Helsinki, 1976, p. 196. INTRODUCTION xli

5 These sentiments are very perceptively described by Annamari Sarajas in her book Eliimiin meri, tutkielma uusromantiikan kirjallisista aatteista (,The Sea of Life, a Study in the Literary Ideas of Neo-Romanticism '). Werner SOderstrom, Porvoo, 1961. • Cf. Edward Westermarck,Memoriesofmy Life. Allen & Unwin, London,1929, p. 34. 7 Cf. the essays by Matti Klinge, 'Vuosisadanalun antipositivismi' (,The Anti-Positivism of the Beginning of the Century') and 'Politiikka luonnontieteena' (,Politics as Natural Science') in Vihan veljistii valtiososialismiin, Werner Soderstrom, Porvoo, 1972. 8 Snellman was the leading figure in Finnish philosophy during the nineteenth century. He also played a very influential role in the political and social life of the country. He championed the cause of Finnish in administration and education where Swedish had been dominant. Kaila, incidentally, was married to a granddaughter of Snellman, the painter Anna Snellman-Kaila. • When the Swedish philosophical periodical Theoria started in 1935, some leading Scandinavian philosophers, among them Westermarck and Kaila from Finland, were invited to contribute papers. Kaila wrote (44), on 'The Religion of Albert Einstein'. At the same time as it expresses respect and sympathy for the great scientist's sentiment of awe for the world-order, the paper is critical of any attempt, including Einstein's in some autobiographical and semi-philosophical writings, to articulate this sentiment in discur• sive terms. Kaila concludes the paper by saying that it seems to be the fate of this intel• lectual craving for religion that it can only be satisfied through an erroneous inference from facts. 10 "Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, hat auch Religion; wer jene beiden nicht besitzt, der habe Religion." II Martti Haavio, 'Eino Kaila ja arvot' ('E. K. and Values'), Ajatus 23 (1960), 17-83. 12 Rolf Nevanlinna, op. cit., p. 105f. 13 Russells antinomi och andra paradoxala motsiigelser, logiska unders6kningar ('The Antinomy of Russell and Other Paradoxical Contradictions; Logical Investigations'). Abo 1916. 14 Uuno Saarnio, Untersuchungen zur symbolischen Logik. 1. Kritik des Nominalismus und Grundlegung der logistischen Zeichentheorie (Symbolologie). Acta Philosophica Fennica 1 (1935). 15 Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung; der Wiener Kreis. Artur Wolf Verlag, Wien, 1929. [English trans. by P. Foulkes and M. Neurath as 'The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle' in Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology ed. by M. Neurath and R. S. Cohen (Vienna Circle Collection: D. Reidel, Dordrecht and Boston, 1973), pp. 299-318 - Ed.). I. 'Op. cit., p. 12 and p. 19. 17 Ake Petziill, Logistischer Positivismus, Versuch einer Darstellung und Wiirdigung der philosophischen GrundJznschauungen des sog. Wiener Kreises der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung. G6teborgs H6gskolas Arsskrift 37 (1931), 3. 18 Herbert Feigl, 'The Wiener Kreis in America', in The Intellectual Migration, ed. by D. Fleming and B. Bailyn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, p. 646. I· A. Blumberg and H. Feigl, 'Logical Positivism, a New Movement in European Philos• ophy', The Journal of Philosophy 28 (1931). 20 ["The highest philosophy of the scientific investigator is to bear an incomplete con• ception of the world ...", The Science of Mechanics (Open Court, 1942), p.560. I have modified the text according to the translation of R. von Mises in his Positivism: A xlii INTRODUCTION

Study in Human Understanding (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 201 - Ed.). 11 A. 1. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, Macmillan, London, 1940, p. 248 and passim. EDITORIAL PREFACE

This volume contains four of Eino Kaila's long papers on the philosophy of science, translated from his own original text in German or, in one case, from a fme German translation of his original Finnish text. Bringing Kaila's work to the English-reading world was first suggested by Mario Bunge, and en• couraged by Jaakko Hintikka and G. H. von Wright, acting on behalf of the Philosophical Society of Finland; and since Kaila was one of the first philos• ophers to investigate the philosophical developments of the Vienna Circle in original and critical detail, we have welcomed a volume of his relatively early works (and one related posthumous essay) to the Vienna Circle Collection. Cost of translation was borne by a grant from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (through the Philosophical Society of Finland) and we are grate• ful for this assistance. We are also grateful for his kind permission to publish these works to Eino Kaila's son, Mr. Olli Kaila; to Jaakko Hintikka for his loan of several rare texts; to the editors of Ajatus for their willingness to let Professor von Wright adapt their Kaila bibliography for this book; and to von Wright for his lucid and humane introduction to Kaila's scientific and philo• sophical life, as well as for his continued encouragement and help in the preparation of this book. We want particularly to thank the translators, Ann and Peter Kirschenmann, for their care and for their intelligent scholarship. These works of Eino Kaila are of historical interest but they will, we believe, also be relevant and stimulating to philosophers today. Perhaps we may hope that this volume will arouse greater attention to other works by this remarkably creative and wise, but, to our loss, largely neglected thinker.

R. s. COHEN

xliii TRANSLATORS'NOTE

It has been eight long years since we began translating our first of Kalla's works, published here as Essay 2. Essays 4, 1 and 3 followed in that order, the typescript of the last being fmished about two years ago. Work proceeded sporadically throughout because of uncertain subsidy and publication arrange• ments and because of varying other commitments. It was always due to the constant efforts of Professor von Wright that work was resumed. Clearly, our translating skills, familiarity with the technical language involved, and stylistic preferences must have changed during these years. We fear this will be reflected in some inconsistencies in the text in spite of the efforts we have taken, with the kind assistance of the editor, to achieve a measure of uniform• ity. There are other reasons for the unevenness which remains. The translations are from German texts, and we usually kept as close as possible to them. Three of the works were written in German by Kaila himself, while Essay 4 is based on a German translation by Mr. H. Henning and differs somewhat in style from the others. Kaila's own German, though mostly impeccable, is not always smooth and we did not conceal this fact. In a few places there was some uncertainty about the meaning of a German expression or phrase he used. Further, the division of labor, rough translating and polishing up, changed in the course of the years. Lastly, several typists, some with their own ideas about punctuation and spelling, were involved in producing the fmal manuscripts; there was also some uncertainty about whether American or British spelling was to be used. Certain minor corrections have been made where they seem necessary; for example, on line 6 of page 191, Professor Kaila had 'Copernican' and we sub• stituted 'Ptolemaic'. We hope, of course, that the fmal product will nonetheless be found to be a readable book.

August, 1978 A. K., P. K.

xlv