Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 149 cially puzzling in light of the fact that his understanding of the ontological status of forms as possibilities for formation by the organism provides a tool for defending Dewey from idealistic interpretations without falling into scientific realism, and at the same time acknowledges the creative experimental structure of experience that is partially constitutive of the content grasped at any level of human awareness. What most needs emphasizing, however, is not particular points of disagreement, but rather the fact that this is a scholarly and important work which should add to the rapidly expanding interest in Dewey's philosophy. SANDRA B. ROSENTHAL Loyola University, New Orleans Jan Wolefiski. Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. Synthese Library, Vol. 138. Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. Pp. xiv + 364 . DFL 195. This monograph presents the tradition of logic and philosophy, excluding ethics and history of philosophy, which flourished in Lvov and later in Warsaw between 1895 and 1945. For an alternative account which separates the two schools and for the postwar period we have the valuable work by Z. A. Jordan, Philosophy and Ideology. (Reidel, 1963). Chapters 1-3 cover the founding of a philosophical tradition in modern Poland by Kazimierz Twardowski, who completed his doctoral work in philosophical psychology under the influence of Brentano. Appointed to a professorship in Lvov, he exemplified high standards of intellectual work and crafted the vocabulary of modern Polish philosophy. His learning and charisma soon attracted a circle of dedicated students including W. Witwicki, J. Lukasiewicz, K. Ajdukiewicz, T. Cze2owski, T. Kotarbifiski, and S. Legniewski. After 1918, under the leadership of Lukasiewicz and Legniewski, Warsaw became a major factor in the tradition. While philosophy had been cultivated independently of mathematics and logic in Lvov, in Warsaw these disciplines were much more closely interrelated. Mathematical logic soon became an essential ingredient in Polish analytical methods. Chapters 4 through 9 present the major contributions of the LvovWarsaw (L-W) School to logic. Chap. 4, "The Development of the L-W School," traces a shift from a philosophical to a mathematical approach to logic. Chap. 5, "The Classical Sentential Calculus," treats Lukasiewicz's notation, Jagkowski's Natural Deduction system , and metalogical issues of the sentential calcnlus. Chap. 6, "Non-Classical Logics," reviews multivalued logics, modal logic, intuitionistic logic, and Jagkowski's discursive logic. Chap. 7 sketches Legniewski's systems, viz., Protothetic (sentential calculus), Ontology (predicate calculus), and Mereology (foundations of mathematics). Chap. 8, "Metamathematics, Foundations of Mathematics and the Semantic Conception of Truth," shows how Tarski's work rests crucially on Legniewski's distinction between language and metalanguage and on the use in the Warsaw School of infinitistic methods even though these were rejected by Hilbert. Chap. 9, "The History of Logic and 150 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29"1 JANUARY ~99 I Interpretation of Traditional Logic: The Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics," includes Lukasiewicz's work on Aristotle's syllogistic and on Stoic logic. In all of these chapters several themes are apparent. There was a pronounced antipsychologism and an emphasis on extensionalism and nominalism in logic. There was a "basic liberalism" regarding logicism, formalism, and intuitionism. There was a basic agreement about the utility of constructivist methods. Wolefiski attributes the rise of the L-W School to the cultivation of logic as a discipline, which "drew technical skills from mathematics and a reflective attitude towards logic from philosophy" (92). The idea that such a logic arose as a reaction to Twardowski's Brentanism, just as Russell's logic was a reaction to Bradley's Hegelianism, does not occur to Wolefiski. Chapters lO through ~4 examine some philosophical views of the L-W School. These are weaker philosophically than the earlier chapters. The Appendix to Chaps. lo and i 1, as well as Chaps. 12, "Philosophy of Language," and 13, "Philosophy of Science," canvass a miscellany of topics which could have been included in earlier chapters. The second half of the book contains a number of typographical errors, and in some cases diction is a problem. Throughout Wolefiski refers to Twardowski's students as "disciples," which suggests a degree of piety inconsistent with the...