The Scientific World-Perspective and Other Essays, 1931–1963

435 Pages·1978·9.956 MB·English

by  Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (auth.), Jerzy Giedymin (eds.)

THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD-PERSPECTIVE AND OTHER ESSA YS
1931-1963
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
MONOGRAPHS ON EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND OF KNOWLEDGE,
AND ON THE MATHEMATICAL METHODS OF
SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Managing Editor:
J AAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy of Finland and Stanford University
Editors:
ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University
DONALD DAVIDSON, University of Chicago
GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden
WESLEY C. SALMON, University ofA rizona
VOLUME 108
KAZIMIERZ AJDUKIEWICZ
THE SCIENTIFIC
WORLD-PERSPECTIVE
AND OTHER ESSAYS
1931-1963
Edited and with an Introduction by
JERZY GIEDYMIN
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND I BOSTON -U.S.A.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz.
The scientific world-perspective and other essays, 1931-1963.
(Synthese library; v. 108)
'Bibliography of Ajdukiewicz's works': p.
Includes indexes.
Translation of essays selected from the author's Jezyk i poznanie,
with two articles added.
1. Knowledge, Theory of-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Logic,
Symbolic and mathematical-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Languages
Philosophy-Addresses, essays,lectures. I. Giedymin, Jerzy. II. Title.
B4691.A42ES 1977 199'.438 77-21887
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1122-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1120-4
001: 10.1007/978-94-010-1120-4
Selection based on the Polish book
JI;:ZYK I POZNANIE
published by PWN - Copyright by Panstwowe
Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa 1960 (vol. 1) and
Warszawa 1965 (vol. 2)
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 © 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
and copyrightholders as specified on appropriate pages
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978
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
To Mrs. Maria Ajdukiewicz
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
Editor's Preface ix
Ajdukiewicz's Life and Personality xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
Editor's Introduction: xix
Radical Conventionalism, Its Background and Evolution: Poincare,
leRoy, Ajdukiewicz
1. On the Meaning of Expressions (1931) 1
2. Language and Meaning (1934) 35
3. The World-Picture and the Conceptual Apparatus (1934) 67
4. On the Applicability of Pure Logic to Philosophical Problems (1934) 90
5. On the Problem of Universals (1935) 95
6. The Scientific World-Perspective (1935) 111
7. Syntactic Connexion (1936) 118
8. A Seman tical Version of the Problem of Transcendental Idealism
(1937) 140
9. Interrogative Sentences (1934/1938) 155
10. Logic and Experience (1947) 165
11. Epistemology and Semiotics (1948) 182
12. Change and Contradiction (1948) 192
13. On the Notion of Existence (1949) 209
14. Conditional Statement and Material Implication (1956) 222
15. The Problem of the Rationality of Non-Deductive Types of In-
ference (1958) 239
16. The Problem of the Foundation of Analytic Sentences (1958) 254
17. Syntactical Connections between Constituents of Declarative Sen-
tences (1960) 269
18. Axiomatic Systems from the Methodological Point of View (1960) 282
19. The Problem of Foundation (1963) [posthumous] 295
20. The Problem of Empiricism and the Concept of Meaning (1964)
[posthumous] 306
21. Intensional Express!ons (1967) [posthumous] 320
22. Proposition as the Connotation of a Sentence (1967) [posthumous] 348
Bibliography of Ajdukiewicz's Works 363
Index of Names 371
Index of Subjects 373
KAZIMIERZ AJDUKIEWICZ 1890-1963
EDITOR'S PREFACE
Though with considerable delay, most of the writings of Polish logicians of
the inter-war period are now available in English. This is not yet true of
Polish philosophy. In the present volume English-speaking readers will fmd,
for the first time, a sizeable collection of the articles of one of the most
original and distinguished of Poland's philosophers of the present century,
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890-1963).
To be sure, Ajdukiewicz was a philosopher-logician from the beginning of
his career. His first work of some importance, a monograph entitled From
the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences (1921 post-dated; two abstracts
published in 1919/20) exhibited two features which were to become charac
teristic of the style of his later philosophy: On the one hand the monograph
was the result of Ajdukiewicz's deep interest in the systems of modern logic,
the foundations of mathematics, in the properties of deductive systems and
their relevance to philosophy; on the other hand the monograph was an
attempt at developing an 'understanding methodology' (in the sense of
Gennan 'Verstehende Methodologie') of deductive sciences, i.e. a pragmatic
study of axiomatic systems which would supplement purely formal investiga
tions of those systems. The fonner made him a close ally oflogical empiricists;
the latter was rooted in the henneneutic tradition of the second half of the
19th century (Dilthey) which spilled over into the 20th century (Spranger) and
which was not cherished at all by logical empiricists. Moreover Ajdukiewicz's
early preoccupation with the foundations of mathematics and logic brought
him into close contact with the ideas of Poincare and other French thinkers,
notably Couturat and leRoy; a thorough appreciation of Kant's epistemology
and philosophy of mathematics as well as of some ideas of Bolzano and
Husserl (e.g. the classification of 'semantical categories') were also responsible
for the fact that Ajdukiewicz's philosophy defied the stereotype of logical
empiricisr!l.
From the Methodology of Deductive Sciences proved to be, at least in
some respects, a pioneering work and to have an influence on the develop
ment of logic in Poland. For example, it contained (in the first of the
monograph's three parts entitled 'The Logical Concept of Proof: A Method
ological Essay') fonnal (syntactical) definitions of such meta-logical concepts
as 'proof', 'theorem' 'consequence', 'logical theorem', 'logical consequence'
x EDITOR'S PREFACE
and so initiated in Poland the structural method of defming these concepts.
Ajdukiewicz clearly distinguished the concept of 'logical entailment' from
'material entailment (implication), at a time when this was not yet common
place. Tarski's early formulation of the deduction-theorem (1921) was inspired
by a discussion contained in the monograph (Cf. A. Tarski: 'On Some Funda
mental Concepts of Meta-Mathematics', Logic, Semantics, Meta-Mathematics,
Oxford, 1969, p. 32). Moreover in his analysis of the concept of mathematical
existence (in the third part entitled 'On the Notion of Existence in Deductive
Sciences') Ajdukiewicz used the concepts of satisfaction, truth and domain
of a theory though the difference between the logical semantics and the
logical syntax was not quite clear to him (or anyone else) at the time. Finally,
in connection with his discussion of the consistency proofs by interpretation
and of the existence of absolute consistency proofs (the second of the three
essays, entitled 'On Proofs of Consistency of Axioms') Ajdukiewicz refutes
the then common claim that any proof of the conSistency of the axioms of
logic would be circular (Cf. A. Tarski: The Concept of Truth in Formalized
Languages', Logic, Semantics, MetaMathematics, p. 237).
Among Ajdukiewicz's contributions to the logical syntax perhaps the best
known is his analysis and defmition of 'syntactically connected expressions'.
This analysis includes a notation for the categories of expressions and an
algorithm for testing whether an expression compounded of simple expres
sions of a language will belong to a definite 'semantical category' i.e. will be
syntactically connected. The algorithm shows, for example, that the formula
which expresses Russell's paradox is not syntactically connected. Since the
idea of 'semantical categories' (which originated with Husserl and was
introduced into foundational studies by S. Lesniewski) is related to the
classification of 'parts of speech' in colloqUial language, Ajdukiewicz's
analysis of 'syntactical connection' is of relevance to the logic of natural and
not only of formal languages. This is why 'syntactical connection' and
Ajdukiewicz's 'categorial grammar' are used and discussed in the writings on
the syntax and semantics of natural languages in contemporary philosophical
logic (Cf. P. T. Geach: 'A Program for Syntax' and D. Lewis: 'General Seman
tics' Synthese 22 (1970), Nos. 1/2.) Apart from the fundamental article 'Syn
tactic Connexion', the present volume contains several until now not easily
accessible articles in which Ajdukiewicz applied the 'categorial analysis' either
to some traditional philosophical problems (e.g. the problem of universals)
or to linguistics (in 'Syntactical Connections between Constituents of
Declarative Sentences') or to the philosophy of language (in 'Intensional
Expressions', and 'Proposition as the Connotation of a Sentence').
The logic of questions and answers was another area, now being extenSively