Theory of science;: Attempt at a detailed and in the main novel exposition of logic with constant attention to earlier authors

by Bernard Bolzano

English, German (translation)

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Logic

399 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1837

Reviews

[S]

This is the book I want most in 2014. I suppose I ought to save up for it: 574.93.

Let me tell you a story about Fr. Bolzano and the history of philosophy (and post-kantian intellectual pedigree):

Kant responded to Hume's Radical Empiricism and Leibniz's, I don't know, Monadism/Rationalism? Anyway, Kant's transcendentalism placed the role of science into the tower of the mind, which, in my humble opinion, leads to a brain-in-the-vat Matrix-type ontology: we can only know the contents of our minds, we can never be certain we know things in themselves. This, of course, eventually lands us into a quagmire of skepticism.

There were several philosophers who responded to Kant, either carrying the torch or critiquing it (notably Hegel, who paid significantly more attention to history than Kant did, but, you know, we can't have a Hegel without first having a Kant).

One of the philosophers who responded to Kant and Hegel, but whom we don't hear a lot about (at least in the anglo-american philosophical mainstream) is Fr. Bolzano, a logician, mathematician, and whom the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia called, "always a loyal son to the church."

Let me just mention a few of the thinkers who were inspired by his writings:

1) Georg Cantor, arguably one of the most important theoretical mathematicians of the 20th century. (See Set Theory and the Diagonal Theorem {the theory of transfinite numbers WILL blow your mind}.)

2) Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology. Where Cantor made important contributions to the field of the foundation of mathematics, Husserl sought to give scientific knowledge itself a stable philosophical ground. (I don't know about you guys, but I see a pattern.)

And, one of my personal favorites, the Mathematical pedagogue and combinatorician, George Polya, who breathed new life into the study of heuristics.

These immensely fertile intellectual developments can, in one way or another, be traced to Bolzano. I, personally, am super excited about this release.

[Leser T S]

Nice one.

[S]

I came for the heuristics, but I stayed for the Logic.