2 results for "History"

Alfred Tarski and the Vienna Circle: Austro-Polish Connections in Logical Empiricism

Jan Wolenski,Eckehart Köhler
The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga. Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and proof and on the nature of metalanguages. The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner.
Springer 2013-01-12 360 pages

Kotarbiński: Logic, Semantics and Ontology

Jan Wolenski
Tadeusz Kotarbinski is one of towering figures in contemporary Polish philosophy. He was a great thinker, a great teacher, a great organizer of philosophical and scientific life (he was, among others, the rector of the Uni versi ty of t6dz, the president of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the president of the International Institute of Philosophy), and, last but not least, a great moral authority. He died at the age of 96 on October 3, 1981. Kotarbinski was active in almost all branches of philosophy. He made many significant contributions to logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology, history of philosophy, and ethics. He created a new field, namely praxiology. Thus, using an ancient distinction, he contributed to theoretical as well as practical philoso~hy. Kotarbinski regarded praxiology as his major philosophical "child". Doubtless, praxiology belongs to practical philosophy. This collection, howewer, is mainly devoted to Kotarbinski' s theoretical philosophy. Reism - Kotarbinski' s fundamental idea of ontology and semantics - is the central topic of most papers included here; even Pszczolowski' s essay on praxiology considers its ontological basis. ,Only two papers, namely that of Zarnecka-Bialy and that of Wolenski, are not linked with reism. However, both fall under the general label "Kotarbinski: logic, semantics and ontology". The collection partly consists of earlier published papers.
Springer Netherlands 2011-09-28 235 pages