[lit-ideas] Re: America's Greatest Word
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:57:42 -0800
Donal wrote
On a quibble: Tarski was not a "Polish logician" so much as Polish and a
logician. He no more was a specifically Polish logician than he had a specifically Polish
cell-structure or DNA or was a specifically right-handed logician. But we all knew this.
I think it might be fair to call him a Polish logician in a non-trivial
sense (although I don't know if this is the sense JL has in mind).
Tarski was a member of the Lvov-Warsaw School (of philosophy), begun by
Kazimierz Twardowski, at the turn of the century in Lvov.
This is from the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lvov-warsaw/>, by Jan Woleński
‘The Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) was the most important movement in the
history of Polish philosophy. It was established by Kazimierz Twardowski
at the end of the 19^th century in Lvov... The LWS flourished in the
years 1918–1939. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Stanisław
Leśniewski, Jan Łukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski are its most famous
members. It was an analytical school similar to the Vienna Circle in
many respects. On the other hand, the attitude of the LWS toward
traditional philosophy was much more positive than that of logical
empiricism. Although logic became the most important field in the
activities of the LWS, its members were active in all spheres of
philosophy. World War II and political changes in Poland after 1945
caused the end of the LWS as an organized philosophical enterprise. One
can consider it to have later been continued individually by its
representatives.
‘Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) opened the list of young mathematicians and
philosophers attracted by logic in Warsaw…
‘The development of logic in Warsaw had two subperiods in 1918–1939,
namely 1918–1929 and 1929–1939. The first decade consisted in intensive
teaching and scientific work at the seminars of Leśniewski and
Łukasiewicz. Not many results were published at that time. The explosion
of publications took place in 1929 and later. There are several factors
which caused the development of mathematical logic in Poland. The Warsaw
school of logic appears to be model case, but the power of this circle
influenced other places where the general environment was not so
favourable to logic. The fruitful co-operation of mathematicians and
philosophers in Warszawa had the utmost significance. The founders of
the Polish mathematical school made a brave experiment consisting in
inviting two philosophers with a modest mathematical background as
professors at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences…In Poland
mathematical logic was considered to be an autonomous science, not a
part of mathematics or philosophy. From the present-day point of view
this might seem as an exaggeration, but this ideology contributed
essentially to the strength of Polish logic. Their representatives were
fairly conscious of the fact that the propagation and defence of the
autonomy of this field had to be confirmed by important scientific
results and international recognition. Moreover, this view about logic
motivated various purely theoretical investigations on formal systems.
On the other hand, Polish logicians strongly insisted that logic should
not be restricted only to mathematics and required the co-operation of
representatives of all field in which logic might be used. Still another
factor played an important role, namely the conviction about the social
significance of logic as a weapon against all kinds of irrationalism.
Tarski once said “Religion [you can also say “ideology” — JW] divides
people, logic brings them together.” According to Łukasiewicz, “Logic is
morality of thought and speech”. Thus, Polish logicians doing logic and
teaching it were convinced that they were performing an important social
service.’
Someone (Max Black) once tried to teach me something called 'Polish
notation,' but I escaped and hid in Sapsucker Woods until term was over.
<http://www.birds.cornell.edu/netcommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1576>
Robert Paul,
trying to forget logic,
somewhere south of Reed College
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