A COMMENT on Peter Simons'
Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe
from Bolzano to Tarski
Selected Essays.
(Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht-Boston-London 1992, xiv + 441)

by Roman Murawski

The book - introduced by Witold Marciszewski on behalf of the Warsaw Scientific Society - consists of 16 essays on the philosophy and logic in Central Europe in the period 1837 - 1939, supplemented by an extensive bibliography and the indices of persons, subjects and cities.

What is meant in the reviewed book by Central Europe? It is of course as much cultural as geographical notion. The author uses it to denote the area (in both those aspects) with centres in Prague, Vienna, Graz and Lwow. They were all cities in the Austrian half of the dual monarchy sharing the same cultural and educational system. The name "Austrian" would be too narrow to describe them because there were many connections with developments outside the borders of the Empire, e.g. in Goettingen, Jena, Berlin, Cambridge. This epithet would also overlook the Polish contribution.

There is an opinion in the history of philosophy of 20th century that there are two separated mainstreams: analytic philosophy and continental one. It is true but it is not the whole truth in fact. To prove that was - as Simons explains in Chapter 1 - one of the inspirations of writing the collected essays. The other dichotomy the author struggles against is the one between diachronic and synchronic approaches to philosophical problems.

The essays are mainly concerned with relationships between logic and ontology. The first one "Bolzano, Tarski, and the limits of logic" is devoted to Tarski's proposal for demarcating the logical objects in a type-hierarchy, based on the idea of invariance under arbitrary permutations of the domain of individuals. The author suggests how to combine this idea with some Bolzano's insights.

Next essay recalls forgotten Brentano's reform of logic of terms (coming from 1870/71). It was based on his theory of judgement according to which the basic form of jugdement is an affirmation or denial of existence. The author shows that it is possible to develop a propositional logic within the term logic.

The purpose of the essay "The formalization of Husserl's theory of wholes and parts" is the attempt to clarify and interpret what Husserl was trying to say in his third Logical Investigation. A rigorous treatment of the most important notions is offered and places where such notions might prove important in ontology are suggested.

G.Frege, the founder of modern formal logic and of the logicism was also an author of a theory of real numbers. Unfortunately, this theory received almost no attention. The essay devoted to it summerizes and expounds what Frege has to say. The author tries to reconstruct the most important steps of Frege's theory as well as indicates various difficulties of it.

There were some connections and interactions between English and Austrian philosophers at the beginning of this century, in particular between Brenatano, Meinong, Moore and Russell. They are examined in the essays: "The Anglo-Austrian analytic axis" and "On what there isn't: the Meinong-Russell dispute". The latter is devoted to the study of the Russell-Meinong debate on the status and logic of non-existent objects. An evaluation of the outcome of it as well as a brief outline of subsequent developments are given.

It is interesting that also Polish philosophy and logic have their roots in the Anglo-Austrian axis. Hence we find in the book some essays devoted to works and achievements of Polish scholars. In particular one finds a study of the influence of Meinong's ideas on the development of many-valued logic by Lukasiewicz, an essay devoted to interpretative difficulties of Lesniewski's ontology (where four interpretations are suggested), an essay showing how ingredients of Brentano's reformed logic can be used to provide the basis for a system oflogic equivalent in strength to Le\'sniewski's ontology, a paper attempting to investigate the mutual relationships between the latter and other logic systems (in particular classical first-order predicate logic with identity, a universal logic, free logic of Lambert and van Fraassen, Lejewski's system of logic and the author's system of free logic with plural terms). Also the essay "A semantics for ontology" is connected with Lesniewski's ontology. Using some hints from Wittgenstein's Tractatus the author develops what he calls a combinatorial semantics.

Next three essays are connected with the work and ideas of Wittgenstein. "The old problem of complex and fact" attempts to clarify what is the problem and what is Wittgenstein's solution to it. The essay Tractatus Mereologico-Philosophicus is devoted to the issue of mereological essentialism. A (deviant) interpretation of the ontology of the Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" is given. The paper "Wittgenstein, Schlick and the a priori" is devoted to the Schlick's and Wittgestein's criticism of the claim of phenomenologists like Husserl that there are synthetic a priori propositions. It is concluded that they both overlooked the fact that Husserl's concept of analyticity was narrower than their own.

The book is closed by the essay "Categories and ways of being". It is a discussion of one of Ingarden's original contributions to ontology, namely to his theory of existential movements. A historical survey as well as the present state of thoughts are presented.

Already this short overview of the contents of the reviewed book indicates how extensive the variety of discussed subjects is and how many interesting ideas are presented. One should stress the author's methodological rigour and his "Gruendlichkeit". It is really fascinating to see numerous interconnections between various ideas and developments presented in the essays. It is only a pity that some of works and achievemnts belonging to the philosophical and logical tradition of Central Europe of the considered period were not discussed (there is for example no word about Goedel, the Vienna circle is only mentioned, not enough attention is payed to Carnap, Tarski etc.). But the book is a collection of essays and not a systematic exposition - therefore such objections are not reasonable. Still one can hope - and I came very often to that idea reading the book - that the author will write once in the future a systematic history of philosophy and logic in Central Europe (such as J.Wolenski's Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School). The reviewed essays prove that this would be a really interesting book and that the author is just the proper person to do it.

For other comments concerning the same volume - see Table of Contents of No.1 of Mathesis Universalis, item 4