The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia (Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, 23) 3030363821, 9783030363826

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Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook

Radek Schuster  Editor

The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia Vienna Circle Society

Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna Vienna Circle Society, Society for the Advancement of Scientific World Conceptions Volume 23

Series Editor Friedrich Stadler, Inst. Vienna Circle, Univ. of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Advisory Editorial Board Jacques Bouveresse, Collège de France, Paris, France Martin Carrier, University of Bielefeld, Germany Nancy Cartwright, Durham University, UK Richard Creath, Arizona State University, USA Massimo Ferrari, University of Torino, Italy Michael Friedman, Stanford University, USA Maria Carla Galavotti, University of Bologna, Italy Peter Galison, Harvard University, USA Malachi Hacohen, Duke University, USA Rainer Hegselmann, University of Bayreuth, Germany Michael Heidelberger, University of Tübingen, Germany Don Howard, University of Notre Dame, USA Paul Hoyningen-Huene, University of Hanover, Germany Clemens Jabloner, Hans-Kelsen-Institut, Vienna, Austria Anne J. Kox, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Martin Kusch, University of Vienna, Austria James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, USA Thomas Mormann, University of Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain Edgar Morscher, University of Salzburg, Austria Kevin Mulligan, Université de Genève, Switzerland Elisabeth Nemeth, University of Vienna, Austria Julian Nida-Rümelin, University of Munich, Germany Ilkka Niiniluoto, University of Helsinki, Finland Otto Pfersmann, Université Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne, France Miklós Rédei, London School of Economics, UK Alan Richardson, University of British Columbia, CDN Gerhard Schurz, University of Düsseldorf, Germany

Hans Sluga, University of California at Berkeley, USA Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, USA Antonia Soulez, Université de Paris 8, France Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz, Germany Michael Stöltzner, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA Thomas E. Uebel, University of Manchester, UK Pierre Wagner, Université de Paris 1, Sorbonne, France C. Kenneth Waters, University of Calgary, Canada Gereon Wolters, University of Konstanz, Germany Anton Zeilinger, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria Honorary Consulting Editors Wilhelm K. Essler, Frankfurt/M., Germany Gerald Holton, Cambridge, MA, USA Allan S. Janik, Innsbruck, Austria Andreas Kamlah, Osnabrück, Germany Eckehart Köhler, Munich, Germany Juha Manninen, Helsinki, Finland Brian McGuinness, Siena, Italy Erhard Oeser, Vienna, Austria Peter Schuster, Vienna, Austria Jan Šebestík, Paris, France Karl Sigmund, Vienna, Austria Christian Thiel, Erlangen, Germany Paul Weingartner, Salzburg, Austria Jan Woleński, Krakow, Poland Review Editor Bastian Stoppelkamp, University of Vienna, Austria Editorial Work/Layout/Production Robert Kaller Editorial Address Wiener Kreis Gesellschaft Universitätscampus, Hof 1 Spitalgasse 2-4, A-1090 Wien, Austria Tel.: +431/4277 46501 (international) or 01/4277 46501 (national) Email: [email protected] Homepage: http://univie.ac.at/vcs/ More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6669

Radek Schuster Editor

The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia

Editor Radek Schuster Department of Philosophy University of West Bohemia Pilsen, Czech Republic

ISSN 0929-6328     ISSN 2215-1818 (electronic) Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook ISBN 978-3-030-36382-6    ISBN 978-3-030-36383-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Editorial

Czechoslovakia,1 with Prague as its capital, was a significant element in the intellectually fertile ambience of central Europe which enabled the formation and development of the Logical Empiricism of the Vienna Circle. Without doubt, cultural relations and academic interactions between Prague and Vienna had been uninterrupted and strong since the beginning of the modern era, as well as competitive and conflict-laden for political and ethnic reasons. These intellectual interconnections, intertwined with political tensions, can be traced from the time of Rudolf II, a member of the House of Habsburg, who moved his court to Prague in 1583, and these are exemplified by T. G. Masaryk’s seminal political role following his years in Vienna, where he studied under Franz Brentano and later in 1879 completed his “habilitation”. In the nineteenth century, along with the legacy of Bernard Bolzano and the influence of Brentano, the bilateral exchange in the sciences and their philosophy culminated with Ernst Mach. In the period 1867–1895, he played a central role at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague as a professor of experimental physics and as an intellectual who fought against every form of nationalism, racism and anti-­ Semitism. Mach was elected rector twice yet could not prevent the division of the university into Czech and German institutions in 1882. Mach’s great influence amongst his Prague students and colleagues, an influence which naturally spread from Bohemia to Austria, can be well documented, for instance, through his relationships with the physicist Anton Lampa and the philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem, who later became Vienna academics. From his time in Prague, Mach developed a lifelong friendship with chemist Wolfgang Pauli, a Vienna University professor descended from a Prague Jewish publishing family, and subsequently, Mach became godfather and private instructor to his son, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, the Nobel laureate in physics.

1  This is the name of the sovereign democratic state in the area of today’s Czech Republic, Slovakia and part of Ukraine, which declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire on October 28, 1918.

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However, many other scholars played an important role in the emergence of scientific philosophy in Vienna after having left their positions in Prague. Robert Zimmermann, a student of Bolzano, and Alois Höfler, who edited Bolzano’s work and founded The Philosophical Society at the University of Vienna, are, inter alia, worthy of mention. Intense scholarly communication continued into the twentieth century with the appointment of Albert Einstein at the German University in Prague in 1911 and Philipp Frank as his successor, who stayed from 1912 until his emigration in 1938. Frank played a leading mediating role between the Prague and Vienna circles, with contacts in the “Prague Circle” of Jewish authors centred around Max Brod and Hugo Bergmann, including Franz Kafka. Ernst Polak – “the author without work” – who had married Milena Jesenská and left Prague’s literary circles for Vienna, studied under Moritz Schlick. Herbert Feigl, Schlick’s favourite student, was born in Liberec (Reichenberg). Even Schlick’s own ancestry can be traced to Cheb (Eger) in western Bohemia, as can the lineage of Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics and the father of Karl Menger. Mathematician Richard von Mises, an admirer of Mach and Vienna Circle member, worked as an assistant to Georg Hamel at the German Technical University in Brno (Brünn), where he was awarded his “habilitation”. Brno was also the birthplace of Kurt Gödel, one of the most famous members of the Vienna Circle. All these flourishing interactions were reinforced by Rudolf Carnap’s professorship at the German University in Prague from 1931 to 1935. This contributed immensely to the trilateral development of Logical Empiricism as a joint enterprise in Vienna, Prague and Berlin, where the central figure had been Hans Reichenbach. Moreover, this development became manifest in Prague with the first public appearance of the Vienna Circle on the occasion of the 1st Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences in September 1929. Here, the famous manifesto, The Vienna Circle. The Scientific Conception of the World,2 was presented for the first time and provoked the scientific community of the 5th Meeting of German Physicists and Mathematicians, beside which the conference had been co-organized. Five years later, in 1934, The Preliminary Conference of the International Congresses for the Unity of Science, held in Prague in conjunction with the 8th International Congress of Philosophy, provided the starting point for the internationalization of Logical Empiricism. At the same time, however, this point marked the beginning of the dissolution and disintegration of this intellectual and philosophical movement in its home countries, for scholarly, political and racist reasons. As a side-effect, the visits to Prague of American philosophers such as William James, Charles Morris and W. V. O. Quine also indicated the importance of these axes for the emergence in parallel of pragmatism and the analytic philosophy of science. 2  Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis. (Veröffentlichungen des Vereines Ernst Mach.) Vienna: Artur Wolf Verlag 1929. Reprinted and edited in English, French, Italian and Spanish translations by Friedrich Stadler and Thomas Uebel, New York–Vienna: Springer 2012.

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With the increasing influence of German nationalism and National Socialism in Prague from 1933 onwards, the proponents of Logical Empiricism shared the same fate: the persecution and forced migration of, inter alia, Rudolf Carnap and Philipp Frank, plus the renowned Hans Kelsen, who was dismissed in Cologne in 1933 and moved back to his roots in Prague for the period 1936–1938, until his fourth emigration to the United States with active participation in the Unity of Science Movement. In Czechoslovakia, the impact of his pure theory of law, “legal positivism”, has remained visible to the present day, despite all the political changes, for example, in the Brno school of law centred around František Weyr. In retrospect, National Socialism and then Communism, both Hot War and Cold War, destroyed this fascinating cosmos of an Austro-Czech community, but the memories, traces and impacts are still there and, one hopes, are being revived and continued by new generations of scholars and by Carnap’s “scientific humanism”. This volume brings a selection of the contributions presented at an international conference, The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, held in Pilsen, Czech Republic, on February 26–28, 2015. These essays are supplemented by two texts of personal memoirs by Nina Holton and Ladislav Tondl. In the first essay, Jan Šebestík presents the Czech lands as the incubator of modernity in which crucial contributions to modern logic, physics, genetics, phenomenology and psychoanalysis were born. Furthermore, he argues that most theories constructed by the members of the Vienna Circle in the twentieth century had already been anticipated in the aforementioned incubator. Subjected to particular consideration, we find Bolzano’s formal logic as a core of science, Mach’s empiricism and his criticism of metaphysics, and Masaryk’s philosophy of language and his focus on social topics. On the other hand, the author of the second essay, Miloš Kratochvíl, analyses the features and evolution of Czech positivism, pointing out its divergences from the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. He explains that the latter could not be firmly established within the former because of the way Czech positivism as a kind of national philosophy sought to include political and moral values into its scientific conception of the world. The third essay is dedicated to Philipp Frank with a focus on his life and work in Prague. Veronika Hofer introduces Frank as a humanist who was devoted to a modern scientific worldview, as well as being loyal to both the German and Czech intellectual circles in a young Czechoslovak state which was exhibiting a brave but fragile democratic spirit. In the fourth essay, Michael Stöltzner carries an analytical report on the 1929 Prague joint meeting of the German Physical Society and the German Mathematical Society and interprets the philosophical debate between Frank, von Mises and Arnold Sommerfeld from the meeting’s opening session as an indicator of the reception of the scientific conception of the world within the community of German-­ speaking scientists. The fifth essay focuses on Carnap’s work developed during the time he lived in Prague. Here, Jaroslav Peregrin offers a novel interpretation of Carnap’s “syntactic phase”, vindicating it from the contemporary inferentialist point of view. Although

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Carnap later abandoned his ideas on generalized rules in favour of Tarskian semantics, his formal rules, as Peregrin shows, are rules that tackle semantic properties by means of syntactic indicators. Thus, Carnap’s masterpiece from his Prague period – The Logical Syntax of Language – is to be seen not as laden with a dogmatic semantics blindness but rather a profound contribution to the understanding of inferential rules. In the sixth essay, Tomáš Hříbek exposes a striking parallel in the field of the theory of architecture and urbanism between Neurath, or logical empiricists, and Karel Teige, one of the most important Czech avant-garde critics and artists of the 1920s and 1930s. Although there are differences between Neurath and Teige in their approaches to architecture and the Bauhaus, science, rationalism and Marxism, the similarities are more noteworthy, especially when we take into account the fact that they developed their views independent of each other. The two following essays deal with Czechoslovak scholars’ responses to the Logical Empiricism of the Vienna Circle, one dissenting and the other in favour. On the one hand, Jakub Mácha and Jan Zouhar expound arguments against the logical and mathematical fetishism of Arnošt Kolman, a Czech mathematician and Communist official. Kolman’s critique, grounded in Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism, represents the tendentious and biased criticism of Viennese philosophy characteristic of Marxism-Leninism which dominated official Czechoslovak philosophy during the Communist regime. On the other hand, Juraj Hvorecký introduces the work and legacy of Igor Hrušovský, Slovak Philosopher, as the best positive example of the acceptance and development of the Vienna Circle tradition within the context of Czechoslovak philosophy. We thank both our home institutions – the Vienna Circle Institute, University of Vienna, and the Research Centre for the Theory and History of Science, University of West Bohemia  – for co-organizing the conference, The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, and supporting the publication of this volume. Our thanks go to all our colleagues who made the conference and proceedings possible; the members of the Organizing and Programme Committees, namely Stefanie Dach, Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau, Tomáš Marvan and Ladislav Kvasz; and all reviewers, speakers and authors.3 Our special thanks go to Nina and Gerald Holton. Professor Holton supported the conference from afar and provided us with his wife’s vivid portrait of Hania Frank. We are grateful for being allowed to include such personal memories and photographs of Hania and Philipp Frank in this volume.

3  The conference was supported by the Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme (OPVK), Research Centre for Theory and History of Science, registration No. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0138, co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic. The follow-up bilateral cooperation that has led to this volume was supported by AKTION Austria-Czech Republic.

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Finally, we would like to pay tribute and express gratitude to Ladislav Tondl, one of the most enthusiastic communicators of the legacy of the Vienna Circle not only in the Czechoslovak environment but worldwide, who passed away in August 2015 and whose reminiscences we publish here. As far as we know, these memoirs, which Professor Tondl gave us shortly before the conference, are his last text. Pilsen, Czech Republic  Radek Schuster Vienna, Austria  Friedrich Stadler

Contents

Part I The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia – Essays 1 How Philosophers in the Czech Lands Broke Ground for the Vienna Circle��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Jan Šebestík 2 Why Czech Positivism Could Not Be Absorbed by Logical Positivism ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   33 Miloš Kratochvíl 3 Philipp Frank’s Civic and Intellectual Life in Prague: Investments in Loyalty����������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Veronika Hofer 4 Scientific World Conception on Stage: The Prague Meeting of the German Physicists and Mathematicians ������������������������������������   73 Michael Stöltzner 5 Rudolf Carnap’s Inferentialism��������������������������������������������������������������   97 Jaroslav Peregrin 6 Minimum Dwellings: Otto Neurath and Karel Teige on Architecture����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  111 Tomáš Hříbek 7 Arnošt Kolman’s Critique of Mathematical Fetishism������������������������  135 Jakub Mácha and Jan Zouhar 8 Igor Hrušovský on Social Sciences ��������������������������������������������������������  151 Juraj Hvorecký

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Part II The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia – Memoirs 9 On Hania Frank ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  165 Nina Holton 10 Major Contacts with Stimulating Initiatives of Analytical Philosophy and the Vienna Circle������������������������������������  173 Ladislav Tondl Part III Reviews 11 Christian Damböck, Deutscher Empirismus: Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830–1930. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, Bd. 24.) Dordrecht: Springer 2017. xiii +237 pages����������������������������������������������������������������  185 Scott Edgar 12 Stepan Ivanyk, Filozofowie ukraińscy w Szkole Lwowsko-Warszawskiej. Warszawa: Semper 2014. 223 pages��������������  191 Jan Jakub Surman 13 Monika Gruber, Alfred Tarski and the “Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages”: A Running Commentary with Consideration of the Polish Original and the German Translation. (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, Vol. 39.) Cham: Springer 2016. xii + 187 pages������������������������������������  195 Adam Tamas Tuboly Obituary: In Memory of Robert S. Cohen (1923–2017)������������������������������  199 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  201

Part I

The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia – Essays

Chapter 1

How Philosophers in the Czech Lands Broke Ground for the Vienna Circle Jan Šebestík

There are striking similarities between the philosophers who lived and worked in the Czech lands in the nineteenth century and the Viennese in the first 37 years of the twentieth century. First, the three most important philosophers in the Czech lands in the nineteenth century, Bolzano, Mach and Masaryk, were scientists, like the members of the Vienna Circle. The counterparts of the logician and mathematician Bolzano are Wittgenstein, Carnap and Hans Hahn, Masaryk and Neurath are both sociologists, and Mach is the philosopher-scientist who inspired the Vienna Circle more than anybody else. Bolzano’s message was also a call for a profound reform of society; Neurath considered his philosophical and sociological work as aiming towards the same goal. Second, they all rejected all sorts of subjectivism, especially Kant’s transcendental subjectivism and the excesses of German idealism. Otto Neurath speaks of Bolzano as the philosopher who preserved Austrian philosophy from the Kantian parenthesis. Eventually, Mach himself represents a direct link to the Vienna Circle, which evolved from the Verein Ernst Mach.

1.1  Bolzano Mathematician The Viennese knew about Bolzano, the mathematician. Hans Hahn provided the second edition of the Paradoxes of the Infinite (1920) with notes, comparing Bolzano’s concepts and theorems with Cantor’s and Dedekind’s set theory. In his book Reelle Funktionen,1 he mentions Bolzano’s proof of the intermediate value  Hans Hahn, Reelle Funktionen. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft 1932, p.187.

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J. Šebestík (*) Institut d’Histoire des Science de l’Université de Paris l and CNRS, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_1

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theorem. Another mathematician, Karl Menger, a disciple of Hahn who took part in the meetings of the Vienna Circle, was inspired partly by Henri Poincaré and partly by a note of Bolzano’s Paradoxes (§ 40) in his Dimensionstheorie.2

1.2  Bolzano’s Logical Construction of the World Not only Bolzano’s logic had its counterparts among the Viennese thinkers. A fragment of his epistemology treats a problem tackled in Carnap’s Logical Construction of the World (Bolzano never used this term). As far as I know, it has not attracted the attention of philosophers interested in Bolzano or in the Vienna Circle. In spite of all the differences between them, it merits to be explored, which is what I will do now, although I can present only a small part of my research here. Bolzano himself presents the problem under the heading How we arrive at, or could arrive at, our most general judgments of experience.3 In spite of the current opinion, these judgments are not immediate, i.e. they can be derived from other judgments. Bolzano’s intention is not descriptive but normative: the question is how these judgments should and must be formed. The most difficult question arises right at the beginning: how to construct judgements determining temporal relations (simultaneity, temporal order). These judgements are not immediate, because we do not immediately perceive which of our ideas is earlier or later. Moreover, the temporal relation between mental changes cannot generally be derived from the perception of temporal relations of external changes even if occasionally we can do it. […] rather, the temporal order of external changes is, as a rule, inferred from temporal sequences that take place within ourselves. It is impossible for us to know what is earlier or later in the external world if we did not know beforehand what is earlier or later within ourselves. It is indeed possible that I am unable to say which of two objects in my [present] whereabouts, this chapel or that house, I have known longer, until I am told that the former was erected a few years after the latter; but generally things are reversed: only by perceiving internal temporal sequences can I recognize the temporal order of phenomena in the external world. From this it follows that if we want to explain the recognition of internal temporal sequences, we cannot take recourse to our recognition of spatial relations.4

As far as I know, this is the only place in the TS where Bolzano speaks about objects which have an immense charge émotionnelle for him. The chapel and the house are in the village Těchobuz, about 100  km south-east from Prague, where Bolzano spent the happiest years of his life in the Hoffmann family and where he wrote Athanasia and his two major works, the TS and the Grössenlehre. But this is another story, a subject-matter for a novel.  Karl Menger, Dimensionstheorie. Leipzig – Berlin: B. G. Teubner 1928.  Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science III. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, § 303. Abbreviated as TS. 4  Ibid., § 303, n°1. 2 3

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Temporal relations cannot depend on spatial relations, because, according to Bolzano, the latter are derived from the former. The reason consists in the number of dimensions: time has only one while space has three dimensions (the reason of Bolzano’s unhappy speculative derivation of the three-dimensionality of space lies precisely in the existence of three determining parameters of a time interval, a derivation rightly judged absurd by Hermann Weyl). The determination of the presence of an idea – “now, I have the idea A” – or other mental phenomena (sensation, volition, judgment…) is immediate. Simultaneity of two ideas is deduced from the co-presence of a clear complex idea and its parts (which are also ideas). We conclude to non-simultaneity if it is contradictory to think the ideas A and B simultaneously. Another example: a wish precedes its fulfillment. We discover that two ideas were present in our mind at different times if it is contradictory to think them simultaneously. With the same method, we recognize that several ideas or phenomena have repeatedly occurred together. Several methods permit to determine the temporal succession of ideas. If for example we recognize that a phenomenon A is just now present, then we know that its contradictory, B, which we also find in us, must have taken place in the past. For example, if we recognize that we just now formed the judgment Neg. A, then we know that the judgment A, if we have also formed it, must have been formed in the past.5

Cyclic sequences of mental phenomena such as a, b, c, …, z, a, b, … yield a method for comparing time intervals: we associate other phenomena A and B with the first and the last element of the sequence so that A is simultaneous with a and B with z. We know that A and B are separated by the time interval which is required to generate all the intermediate ideas b, c,…, y. If we repeat the cycle, the phenomenon C appears with the second occurrence of z and we know that the time interval AC is twice the interval AB.

1.2.1  Existence of External Objects External intuitions are modifications of our mental state. This modification leads us to the presupposition of an external object whose influence (Einwirkung) is the cause of these intuitions. The presupposition that external objects exist relies on the identification of the source of different intuitions: If it happens repeatedly that we experience simultaneously certain intuitions which fall under the concepts A,B,C,D, … , and we rarely, if ever, experience one of them without the other, then we conclude with a good deal of probability that it is one and the same real object which causes these intuitions in us. We may therefore attribute several powers to it,

 Ibid., § 303, n°4.

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namely the power to generate intuition A, to generate intuition B, etc. This method of inference allows us to discover, by and by, the different powers which surrounding objects have.6

For example, if we have repeated intuitions of red color together with a certain fragrance, we conclude that both were produced by the same object, a rose. But this is only a probable inference. Bolzano reminds also that already Berkeley noted quite correctly that the reason why we unite into one whole intuitions which come through several senses, and take them to be the effect of one and the same object, merely derives from the simultaneous presence of such intuitions. He also noted correctly that we infer a causal connection when certain phenomena always follow each other.7

According to Bolzano, Berkeley’s denial of the existence of external objects had no “detrimental effect upon the explanation concerning the origin of mediated judgments of experience, since this mediation remains the same”, independently of the real cause – external objects or directly God – of our intuitions.8 What, then, are external objects, bodies? Bolzano’s answer is the same as that of Leibniz: they are systems of spiritual substances. In contrast to Descartes and Berkeley, Bolzano does not need God to guarantee the existence of material objects (Descartes) or the coherence of our ideas (Berkeley). Our intuitions are the result of our direct experiencing, “seeing” of certain aspects of the systems of these substances. Collections of material substances manifest themselves as visible, colored, tactile, as products of their inner forces and their proper spatio-temporal determinations.

1.2.2  Perception My intuitions are always mediated by some part of my body. Here, the concept of mediation is enlarged, because Bolzano speaks not of mediation of judgments by other judgments, but of mediation of intuitions by some (external?) objects. I have intuitions of colors. I cannot produce them at will, but I can always remove them, e. g. by shutting my eyes. They arise through the mediation of a part of my body which I call my eyes. Similarly, I discover that I have other sensory organs. I have intuitions of red color and a memory of the fragrance of a rose. Perhaps I feel the desire to smell it: I pick it and bring it to my nose. At the same time, I see the changes which take place with my hand and conclude that this was also a partial cause of my satisfaction. “In this fashion I learn more and more about the services which can be performed by my hands and the other members of my body.”9 What can be concluded from this sketch of Bolzano’s Logical Construction of the World?  Ibid., § 303, n°12.  Ibid., § 304. 8  Ibid. 9  Ibid., § 301, n°19. 6 7

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1. Bolzano draws many ideas from the British and French empiricist tradition. Although he hardly mentions Hume, Condillac and Bonnet, he offers a detailed analysis of Berkeley’s, de Tracy’s and Tetens’ ideas (de Tracy was his contemporary). One page is devoted to Herbart and a whole 20 pages to Kant – probably the core of Bolzano’s critique of Kant is to be found here – and to his follower Johannes Schultz. In contrast to Kant, whose Critique proceeds in a dogmatic style and explains his conception of space and time without caring about concrete problems of temporal determination, Bolzano gets to the roots of the problem: how to determine the simultaneity and succession of our ideas. 2. Bolzano’s inquiry proceeds as follows: he first analyses the temporal relations, then the existence of external objects and after that spatial relations derived from the temporal ones. The logical construction of the world begins with our intuitions, mainly those of sight and touch, and never leaves them except when we ask how we are able to form fundamental concepts that govern our life (estimation and measure of distances, distinction between strait and curved lines and surfaces, fundamentals of movement). The result is a sort of everyday intuitive geometry and physics while these sciences are hidden behind the horizon that separates intuitions from concepts. This knowledge obtained from the immediate lived contact with the objects of ordinary experience is nevertheless active, yielding norms to guide our perceptions. We progressively discover the power and the different functions of the parts of our body, in particular of our sensory organs. It is necessary to add that in § 303 Bolzano explains how we form general empirical judgments, and that there are purely conceptual judgments free of intuitions: logical, mathematical, metaphysical and some other. Some relics of the pre-­ Kantian times persist, namely the problem of the localization of the soul and the concept of a soul-organ. 3. The role of different experiences is fundamental: almost every subsection of § 303 contains a description of an experience. Experiencing different intuitions, we progressively discover different forces of the objects around us. According to Bolzano, we literally play with sequences of our ideas; we also experience technical procedures. Some paradigmatic examples or experiences appear again and again in many subsections: the intuitions of color and fragrance indicating the object the rose. Exercise and repetition make us discover the different aspects and properties of objects, both external and internal. 4. A comparison with Carnap’s Aufbau would demand a special inquiry and much more space than allowed for my contribution. More than of Carnap’s work, Bolzano’s logical constructions remind one of similar attempts of the German constructivist school (Paul Lorenzen, Friedrich Kambartel, Peter Janich et alii). When Janich speaks about the Dreiplattenverfahren, a procedure to produce a plane surface by means of three metallic plates without a prototype, he pursues the effort initiated by Bolzano’s molding; it is true that Bolzano copied a prototype.

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1.3  Bolzano’s Logic Some of the ideas elaborated in the TS are already present in Bolzano’s first logico-­ philosophical treatise the Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810), namely the idea of an objective connection among truths, a new conception of axiomatic systems, and a response to Pascal’s question: how to define the primitive terms of a theory. Here, I shall give only a summary of his logic according to his mature work, the Theory of Science and On the Mathematical Method.

1.3.1  Abstract Objects: Propositions in themselves Bolzano’s universe is composed of three kinds of objects: (1) physical bodies in space and time standing in causal relations, (2) mental events and states of mind existing in time, and (3) abstract objects an sich, propositions in themselves also called objective propositions (in short propositions) and their parts, objective ideas. The domains 1 and 2 contain existing objects, future, present or past, the domain 3 objects having no real existence in time and space and not subject to causality; they simply are (es gibt). His logic works neither with thoughts (which are products of a mind), nor with sentences of a language, but with propositions and ideas that are the meanings of sentences, resp. of subjective representations. Numbers, equations and other mathematical objects, too, belong to the universe of objects an sich: their concepts are parts of propositions. The best and the shortest explanation of them comes from On the Mathematical Method, § 2: One will gather what I mean by proposition as soon as I remark that I do not call a proposition in itself or an objective proposition that which the grammarians call a proposition, namely, the linguistic expression, but rather simply the meaning of this expression, which must be exactly one of the two, true or false; and that accordingly I attribute existence to the grasping of a proposition, to thought propositions as well as to the judgments made in the mind of a thinking being (existence, namely, in the mind of the one who thinks this proposition and who makes the judgment); but the mere proposition in itself (or the objective proposition) I count among the kinds of things that do not have any existence whatsoever, and never can attain existence.10

Such abstract objects should repel the Viennese empiricists, but not all of them were radical empiricists and Carnap himself with his principle of tolerance allowed such entities. According to Meaning and Necessity (1947), propositions are entities designated by sentences, more precisely, propositions are intensions expressed by a sentence (§ 6–2). As in Bolzano, they are complex entities and neither linguistic expressions nor subjective, i.e. mental occurrences, but rather “something objective that may or may not be exemplified in nature”.

10  Bernard Bolzano, On the Mathematical Method and Correspondence with Exner. Ed. by Paul Rusnock and Rolf George. Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi 2004, pp. 40–41.

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In the well-known text Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (1950), Carnap returns to the problem: “Are there properties, classes, numbers, propositions?” In response, he distinguishes two kinds of questions: internal questions within a given linguistic framework, and external questions “concerning the existence or reality of the system of entities as a whole”. Internal questions are scientific question and can be answered in the conceptual framework of the given science, while external questions are of “problematic character”. Abstract entities may be practically useful, but they are not “ingredient parts of the system, but merely marginal notes” whose existence we do not assert. In short, we can choose our language and it can be convenient to use the language of abstract objects even if we do not believe in them. Among the Viennese, we should not forget the strong adherence to abstract objects expressed by Kurt Gödel’s famous assertion of their existence: Classes and concepts may, however, also be conceived as real objects, namely classes as “pluralities of things” or as structures consisting of a plurality of things and concepts as the properties and relations of things existing independently of our definitions and constructions. It seems to me that the assumption of such objects is quite as legitimate as the assumption of physical bodies and there is quite as much reason to believe in their existence. They are in the same sense necessary to obtain a satisfactory system of mathematics as physical bodies are necessary for a satisfactory theory of our sense perceptions and in both cases it is impossible to interpret the propositions one wants to assert about these entities as propositions about the “data”, i.e., in the latter case actually occurring sense perceptions.11

In Objective Knowledge (1972) and other texts, Karl Popper, inspired by Bolzano and Frege, develops his theory of three worlds: that of physical objects (World 1), that of mental states or processes (World 2) and the world of the products of the human mind (World 3, Bolzano’s third domain, das dritte Reich of Frege). Bolzano’s objective domain of abstract entities is inhabited by propositions and their parts, the ideas; Poppers world 3 contains moreover languages and works of art– symphonies, sculptures and paintings – as well as technical artifacts, even airplanes and airports. Bolzano’s abstract entities are definitely not real, they are neither in time nor in space and are not subject to causality. The reality of these objects is Popper’s central problem: Are world 3 objects, such as Newton’s or Einstein’s theories of gravitation, real objects? Or are they mere fictions, as both the materialist monist and the dualist assert? Are these theories themselves unreal, and only their embodiments real, as the materialist monist would say; including, of course, their embodiments in our brains, and in our verbal behavior? Or are, as the dualist would say, not only these embodiments real, but also our thought experiences; our thoughts, directed towards these fictitious world 3 objects, but not these world 3 objects themselves? My answer to this problem–and, indeed, the central thesis of my talk–is that world 3 objects are real; real in a sense very much like the sense in which the physicalist would call

 Kurt Gödel, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic”, in: P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. The Library of Living Philosophers. New York: Tudor 1944, pp. 125–153.

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physical forces, and fields of forces, real, or really existing. However, this realist answer of mine has to be defended, by rational arguments.12

Popper’s world 3 is thus a world of human products, weaved into the net of causal relations. Nevertheless, Popper makes use of Bolzano’s terminology and ideas: the objective sense of scientific theories “consists not of thought processes but of thought contents” and “The objective thought content is that which remains invariant in a reasonably good translation” (ibid,. section X).

1.3.2  T  he System of Extensional Relations Between Propositions Bolzano starts with the logic of extensional relations between ideas (classes) which he takes with some modifications from the Grundriss der Logik of J. G. E. Maass (3rd. ed. 1806). The most important are compatibility, inclusion (which is a case of compatibility), subordination (= proper inclusion), equivalence, coordination, contradiction and contrariety. An idea A is compatible with another idea B, if there is an object belonging both to the extension of A and to that of B; similarly for other relations. How are extensional relations between propositions obtained from those between ideas? In order to transfer the relations between ideas to propositions, Bolzano has to resort to the method of variation. If in a proposition A(i,j,…), where i,j,… are variable ideas, we consider some ideas as variable, we may substitute for them other ideas. Let us consider the result of all substitutions for chosen variable ideas in a proposition A. We obtain two limit cases: either the class of the propositions thus obtained contains only true propositions (and proposition A is called universally valid relatively to the chosen variable idea), or it contains only false propositions (and proposition A is called universally invalid), or the resulting class contains both true and false propositions (Bolzano does not give a name to such propositions). Bolzano calls true analytic propositions those that contain at least one idea relatively to which the resulting class is universally valid. Bolzano does not specify which ideas may be subject to variation, but his current practice is not to vary logical ideas (e.g. connectives), even if nothing forbids it. A proposition is a logically analytic truth if the resulting class relatively to the variation of all non-logical ideas contains only true propositions. Such are e.g. logical laws like “A which is B is A”, currently called identical or tautologous propositions. In order to appraise the difference between analytical and logically analytical propositions Bolzano states that in the second case, nothing but logical knowledge is needed, since the concepts which form the invariable part of these propositions all belong to logic. On the other hand, for the appraisal of the truth and

 Karl Popper, “Three Worlds”, The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, delivered at the University of Michigan, section VIII, April 7, 1978.

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falsity of propositions like those given in no. 1 [analytic propositions] a wholly different kind of knowledge is required, since concepts alien to logic intrude. This distinction, I admit, is rather unstable, as the whole domain of concepts belonging to logic is not circumscribed so sharply that controversies could not arise at times.13

With these concepts, we are now able to access relations between propositions: the objectual (referring) relation between an idea and its object will correspond the verifying relation between an idea and a propositional form (or, in the fundamental idiom, between one or more ideas and a proposition in which these ideas are considered as variables). The essential step transforms the relations between ideas into relations between propositions or, alternatively, between propositional forms: With ideas, the crucial question was whether or not a certain object is indeed represented by them; the corresponding question for propositions is whether or not they are true. Just as I have called ideas compatible or incompatible with each other, depending on whether or not they have certain objects in common, so I call propositions compatible or incompatible, depending on whether or not there are certain ideas which make all of them true.14

In this way, we obtain a system of relations which, with one important exception, bear the same name as the relations between ideas. The most important are again compatibility, equivalence, coordination, contradiction and contrariety, dependence, incompatibility, exhaustion, exclusion, bilateral exclusion; only, instead of inclusion, we have “the most important concept of logic”, that of deducibility (a case of compatibility, in harmony with Aristotle, but contrary to the modern concept of logical consequence). Bolzano knows also how to express numerical quantification which he treats in the same way as Carnap will do later. Now, Bolzano can define compatibility for propositions in complete analogy with compatibility for ideas: The propositions A, B, C, D,… are all mutually compatible with respect to the variable ideas i,j,… common to all of them if there is a sequence of ideas which, substituted for the variables i,j,…, makes all these propositions true.15 To the existence (or non-existence) of an object represented by each of the compatible (or incompatible) ideas corresponds the existence (or non-­ existence) of an idea or a sequence of ideas which makes each of the compatible (or incompatible) propositions true. Bolzano’s examples of compatible propositions are like the following: let A be “the lion is a mammal”, B “the lion has two wings”. Then A and B are compatible respectively to the variable idea “lion”. There is indeed an idea, that of bat, which makes true both A and B. Similarly for deducibility: propositions M, N, O,… are deducible from propositions A, B, C, D,… with respect to variable parts i, j,… if every collection of ideas whose substitution for i, j, … makes all of A, B,

 Bolzano, TS II. § 148, n°3, p. 59.  Ibid., § 154, p. 71. 15  Ibid. 13 14

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C, D,… true, also makes all of M, N, O,… true. Occasionally, since it is customary, I shall say that propositions M, N, O,… follow, or can be inferred or derived, from A, B, C, D,….16

Note that Bolzano’s definition requires compatibility of the premises. Moreover, the premises are included in the conclusions. We can simplify this definition (as well as that of other relations) by means of the concept of the system of ideas which make given propositions true relative to specified variables (“Inbegriff von Vorstellungen, welche die Sätze A, B, C, D, …wahrmachen”). More precisely, such a system of verifying ideas VA(i) for the sentential forms A(i) = (A(i, j, …), B(i, j, …), C(i, j, …), …) is the set of the sequences of ideas that make the sentential forms A(i) true.17 Our example with the lion then becomes VA (the lion is a mammal) = {man, dog, lion, bat, …}, VB (the lion has two wings) = {swallow, eagle, bat, …} and their intersection is not empty. From this, we get some new definitions: two propositions A and B are compatible if their systems of verifying ideas are compatible in the sense of the logic of classes: A(i) and B(i) are compatible iffVA(i) ∩ VB(i) ≠ ∅ and the definition of deducibility becomes the sets of propositions M may be deduced from A iff both are compatible and VA⊂VM. At the end, we find inclusion again, not of ideas, but of verifying systems. All extensional logical relations between propositions can now be constructed by means of elementary set-theoretical relations between their systems of verifying ideas. The result is a genealogical tree whose fundamental structure is exactly the same as the structure of the tree representing the relations between ideas. In order to stress the correspondence between ideas and propositions Bolzano uses the same terms (except deducibility) for the relations between ideas and those between propositions. Bolzano’s system of relations between propositions is constructed from the extensional relations between ideas as defined in the Maass-Bolzano logic of classes. The concept of system of verifying ideas plays the central role in the systematic reconstruction of Bolzano’s propositional logic. Both the class-logical relations and the relations between propositions are constructed from the initial relation of compatibility by adding specific conditions to previously defined relations. Compatibility is thus the basic relation of Bolzano’s extensional logic. It is imbedded in the very foundations of his system and all other relations (with exception of different cases of exhaustion), deducibility included, are its special cases.

16 17

 Ibid.  Bold letters represent sets or sequences, ordinary letters propositions or variable ideas.

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1.3.3  Deducibility and Probability In the TS, probability is a relation not between events, but between propositions about events. It follows that mathematical probability is founded on logical probability. One of the main reasons why, for Bolzano, deducibility presupposes the compatibility of the premises is that it allows us to extend deductive logic to inductive logic via probability. As before, Bolzano’s definition applies only if the number of ideas admitted for substitutions is finite. He defines the conditional probability (or relative validity) of a proposition M(i) relative to a class of premises or hypotheses A(i) and relative to a chosen sequence of variables i, as the ratio of the number of cases in which all the propositions of the class as well as M(i) are true to the number of cases in which the propositions A(i) are all true. As a consequence, the probability of M(i) relative to A(i) is a fraction in the closed interval [0,1]. Bolzano’s conditional probability is objective, an sich. In probability inferences, only one idea of the collection of equivalent ideas is admitted for substitutions, because if for each variable idea we admit ideas equivalent to it, “the set of true propositions and the set of false propositions produced from the given proposition will both be infinite in every case”,18 and the probability relation cannot be well determined. One can immediately see why the premises of a deduction must be compatible: the probability of M(i) is defined only if the denominator of the fraction is not zero, i.e., if the premises A(i) are compatible. On the other hand, the number of ideas that make true both A(i) and M(i) cannot be greater than the number of ideas that make true M(i); as a consequence, the conditional probability of M(i) cannot be greater than 1. It is 1 exactly when the number of ideas that make true both A(i) and M(i) is equal to the number of ideas that make true A(i) alone, which means that all substitutions of ideas that make true A(i) also make true M(i), i.e. that M(i) is deducible from A(i). In other words, if M(i) is deducible from A(i), its probability relative to A(i) is equal to 1, which means that the probability equals certainty. The probability is zero if no idea makes true both A(i) and M(i) i.e. if A(i) and M(i) are incompatible. Incompatibility and certainty are thus two limiting cases of probability with values 0 and 1. This is an extraordinary achievement. Bolzano’s approach yields the first logical definition of probability. For the first time deductive logic and inductive logic are united in a global theory and the former appears as a limit case of the latter. Both Wittgenstein and Carnap developed similar ideas. Carnap’s regular confirmation functions are strongly reminiscent of Bolzano’s approach.

1.4  The Viennese Counterpart: Wittgenstein Husserl was a reader of Bolzano, but Wittgenstein was not. He may have had a look at Bolzano’s Paradoxes of the Infinite, but he probably did not open a volume of the TS and it is doubtful if he ever looked at Bolzano’s Rein analytischer Beweis. 18

 Ibid. § 161.

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Nevertheless, some coincidences are so striking that Wittgenstein may have known some fundamental Bolzanian concepts. When Wittgenstein explains Bolzano’s method of variation in the Tractatus 3.315, one might think that he adopts or adapts the explanations by Frege and of Russell. However, his wording is too close to that of Bolzano: If we change a constituent part of a proposition into a variable, there is a class of propositions which are all the values of the resulting variable proposition. This class in general still depends on what, by arbitrary agreement, we mean by parts of that proposition. But if we change all those signs, whose meaning was arbitrarily determined, into variables, there always remains such a class. But this is now no longer dependent on any agreement; it depends only on the nature of the proposition. It corresponds to a logical form, to a logical prototype.

As we have seen, Bolzano distinguished two special classes of propositions: universally valid and universally invalid. Logically valid propositions are also called tautologies. Similarly, in the Tractatus 4.46: Among the possible groups of truth-conditions there are two extreme cases. – In the one case the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the elementary propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological. – In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities. The truth-conditions are self-contradictory. – In the first case we call the proposition a tautology, in the second case a contradiction.

The most striking coincidence takes place when Wittgenstein speaks about consequence (Bolzano’s deducibility) in terms of truth-grounds and about the probability of a proposition which depends on some hypotheses (5.11–121). He begins with a definition: 5.101 “Those truth-possibilities of its truth-arguments, which verify the proposition, I shall call its truth-grounds.” This section makes it possible to paraphrase Bolzano’s concept of deducibility in terms of Russell’s logic: 5.11 “If the truth-grounds which are common to a number of propositions are all also truth-grounds of a certain proposition, we say that the truth of this proposition follows from the truth of those propositions.” 5.12 “In particular the truth of a proposition p follows from that of a proposition q, if all the truth-grounds of the second are truth-grounds of the first.” It follows from Bolzano’s definition of deducibility that the premises are included in the conclusion: “since this relation between propositions A, B, C, D… and M, N, O,… is very similar to the relation between including and included ideas, I shall allow myself to call propositions A, B, C, D,… included, and M, N, O,… including propositions.”19 Wittgenstein makes the same remark in 5.121: “The truth-grounds of q are contained in those of p; p follows from q.” Now, Wittgenstein can (5.15) define the probability of a proposition ‘s’ relative to the hypothesis ‘r’ exactly like Bolzano:

19

 Ibid., § 155, n°2, p. 80.

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If Tr is the number of the truth-grounds of the proposition ‘r’, Trs the number of those truth-­ grounds of the proposition ‘s’ which are at the same time truth-grounds of ‘r’, then we call the ratio Trs: Tr the measure of the probability which the proposition ‘r’ gives to the proposition ‘s’.

And he concludes (5.152) that If p follows from q, the proposition q gives to the proposition p the probability 1. The certainty of logical conclusion is a limiting case of probability. (Application to tautology and contradiction.)

Did Wittgenstein invent these ideas or did he find them in Bolzano’s writings? Bolzano’s logic was an object of controversies and discussions among the Brentanians Twardowski, Meinong and Husserl since 1885. In his lectures, Husserl followed, commented and developed Bolzano’s logical theories. In 1913, Lukasiewicz discussed in detail his logic of probability. In 1909, Hugo (S.) Bergmann published the monograph Das philosophische Werk Bernard Bolzanos. Nevertheless, I believe that there is another source of Wittgenstein’s ideas, at the same time apparent and hidden like the Purloined letter in Poe’s novel; it might have been Robert Zimmermann’s first edition of Philosophical Propedeutics in 1853, which contained a summary of Bolzano’s logic. I omit the work of Rudolf Carnap here, i.e., his Studies in Semantics (1942), which would merit a detailed comparison with Bolzano’s logic (Jaroslav Danek’s book Les Projets de Leibniz et de Bolzano: deux sources de la logique contemporaine (1975) contains important elements for this task).

1.5  Bolzano’s Project of Social Reform Eventually, Bolzano elaborated a complete program of social reform presented in his exhortations and especially in On the Best State (written as Samizdat and finished in 1831, published only in 1932).20 He considered it as his essential mission on Earth, “his most important legacy to Humanity”. Similar writings are often considered as belonging to the category of utopian socialism, but Bolzano’s work developed a realistic program for the more distant future, which was almost completely realized a century later in advanced Providence-­ States after World War II. The Best State is a republic in which all citizens are equal. The catholic priest and theologian Bolzano even writes: “The essential equality of all men … is a truth which is more important than that of the existence of God.” All hereditary privileges due to birth are to be abolished. The State guarantees freedom of thought, religion, speech and press. Some kind of censorship subsists but is severely limited and scholars have access to censored material. Private property is restricted by the priority given to its social utility according to the highest moral  Bernard Bolzano, “On the Best State”, in: Selected Writings on Ethics and Politics, Amsterdam– New York: Rodopi 2007, pp. 233–358.

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law: “Among all possible actions, always choose the one that most promotes the virtue and happiness of the whole.”21 The State has the obligation to provide education for all citizens, including girls. At school, children also practice manual work. The State distributes scholarships for higher education, constructs public libraries, art galleries and museums. As regards social security, “No one who needs medical attention shall be required to pay anything either for the doctor or for the medicines […] These costs are borne instead by the municipality…”.22 In one aspect, our short-sighted democracies are still far away from one of his most important measures, namely to reserve some seats in the Parliament for the representatives of future generations.

1.6  What About Bolzano’s Metaphysics? Bolzano is mentioned only once in the Manifesto of the Vienna Circle “The Vienna Circle and the scientific conception of the world” (1929) as one of those “who endeavored the rigorous new foundations of logic” (p. 11). Nevertheless, Neurath wrote several times about the positive role of scholasticism for Austrian philosophy. In contrast to the German Protestants, whose presuppositions are all soaked with metaphysics, the Catholics with their compact dogmatics […], can practice systematic logical analysis, sometimes with an exceptional absence of care for the metaphysical details. Above all, their presuppositions are contestable, but their conclusions often have great clarity and logical consequence.23

1.7  Ernst Mach’s Empirical Epistemology24 1.7.1  Unifying Human Knowledge There could be no greater contrast than that between Bolzano and Mach. Mach’s thinking can be characterized in terms of an epistemological turn in the sense of empirical epistemology, like that of the British empiricists. With Mach, Austrian philosophy takes a new orientation, leaving aside Bolzano’s logical and mathemati Ibid., p. 205.  Ibid., p. 287. 23  Otto Neurath, “Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie”, in: Rudolf Haller, Heiner Rutte (eds.), Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische Schriften 2. Wien: Hölder–Pichler–Tempsky 1981, p. 597. 24  Here I use freely rearranged parts of my “Ernst Mach’s Evolutionary Theory of Representation” published in: Liliana Albertazzi (ed.), Dawn of  Cognitive Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer 2001, pp. 123–134. 21 22

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cal interests as well as Brentano’s introspective study of the human mind. Mach came to philosophy from science. Like Bolzano, he revived the tradition of the great philosophers of the past who were also scientists. But each of them worked in different, complementary fields. Mach knew practically nothing about recent advances in logic and his mathematical knowledge did not go beyond what is necessary for a working physicist. His goal consisted in unifying human knowledge, in closing the chasm between mind and matter, in establishing a common ground for such different disciplines as psychology, physiology and physics in order to construct a unique world picture based on science, and one compatible with common sense and explicable in evolutionary terms. Mach undertook the task of analyzing the formation and the structure of the world as it is perceived and of explaining the evolution of human knowledge. He asked how human thinking evolved from animal behavior and reactions. How is science formed from elementary knowledge contained in perception? What are the ultimate elements of knowledge and how can they be combined in order to obtain conceptual structures which constitute our science? For Mach, we do not perceive colors or forms of objects; what we really see are bodies, corporeal, material bodies in space. It is only by analyzing our perception that we arrive at its components, namely sensations.

1.7.2  What the World Is Composed Of Mach saw a profound split between our psychical activity on the one hand, and the behavior of unanimated objects as reflected in the difference between psychology and physics. “Psychical life seems to be a world for itself, with laws of another order”, mit Gesetzen anderer Ordnung. On the other hand, we experience physical events as being foreign; they could be different. The material bodies could obey different laws without that disturbing us. Would it be possible to reduce one of these apparently fundamentally different domains and sciences to the other? For example, can we conceive of cultural objects in terms of universal physics? Mach resists the temptation of radical physicalism. Even a purely technical object such as Watt’s steam engine cannot be explained in purely physical terms. We can understand a particular, individual engine in terms of physics and engineering, but in order to explain kinds of steam-engines we must also consider their place in industrial production and in the world economy as well as in the history of science and of culture. Even less acceptable to Mach is the physicalist explanation of the thought of a physicist. One should take into account his previous thoughts, his perceptions, his personal history including his education and eventually also the history of physics interwoven into the web of universal history – and all that is an impossible task. Physics and psychology investigate two complementary aspects of reality. Both are legitimate and independent sciences. They both offer responses to ontological problems. In his youth, Mach was not far from the monadological viewpoint. He considered monads (atoms) to be endowed with inner life. Nature was thought of as having two sides: a physical side and a psychological one.

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J. Šebestík If psychical life is to be harmonized at all with the theories of physics, we are obliged, I reasoned, to conceive atoms as feelings (ensouled). The various dynamic phenomena of the atoms would then represent the physical processes, whilst the internal states connected there with would be the phenomena of psychic life.25

If we accept both the atomic hypothesis and the thesis of the unity of the soul, we can arrive “at a tenable monistic conception”. The goal of Mach’s mature work is to destroy this kind of prejudice. There are two instances of prejudices implied in the monadological position. One is the philosopher’s realism operating with the traditional concept of substance (atom) as the permanent bearer of its properties and with the substantial ego, the indestructible soul. The second prejudice involves the naïve attitude of every person (even that of the philosopher outside his study) who believes in a physical world independent of our minds and in the causal relationship between external objects and our sensations and perceptions. The originality of Mach’s position consists in destroying this twofold prejudice and in preserving the naïve attitude of the ordinary man at the same time. First, Mach asks how we know about substances. Do we have the right to conclude that there is a permanent source of our perceptions from the fact that we can have different perceptions of the same object? Must there be an indestructible substratum behind the sensory data? According to Mach, the permanence of a thing does not imply its eternity or indestructibility. We have no experience of absolute permanence; our experience does not go further than mere relative constancy. And above all, we have no access to any mysterious source behind our perceptions; they are all that we have. Thus, the philosophical prejudice about abiding substances must be rejected. Then, however, we need to explain our natural attitude. For Mach, this attitude is the fruit of the biological evolution of the human species. The identification of recurring, more or less permanent complexes of properties was of vital importance in the struggle for survival. The need to schematize an extremely complex world where man was both prey and hunter led to the idea of something permanent producing the manifold of sensory experiences. The realistic fiction of objects hidden behind perceptions can be useful. In the Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, Mach considers a conceptual word such as “matter” to be a “highly natural, unconsciously constructed mental symbol for a complex of sensuous elements”. The same also holds for the thesis of “the artificial hypothetical atoms and molecules of chemistry“: it has only the value of “economical symbolization of the world of experience“.26 Such a hypothesis may serve as a mathematical model to describe certain experiences. The philosopher, however, must explain the origin of such fictions and the limits of their use. Hence Mach’s phenomenism. Although physics operates with independent external objects and psychology operates with inner mental states, both fields deal with one and the same kind of reality, the only one

25  Ernst Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations. Chicago–London: Open Court 1897, p. 183. 26  Ibid., p. 287.

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to which we have direct access and which is all what is really given, namely sensations, Empfindungen.“There is no rift between the psychical and the physical, no within and without, no sensation to which an outward thing corresponds. There is but one kind of elements.” The world is a web of sensations, or to use, with Mach, a more appropriate word (because not associated with subjectivist philosophy), a web of elements, i.e. colors, sounds, pressures, odors, pains etc., and also of spatial and temporal elements. External objects, living beings, other people, and also myself, my “soul” or “organ of consciousness”, mein Bewusstseinorgan, are nothing else but more or less stable functional complexes of such elements. Neither the naïve, non-philosophical realist, nor the scientist loses anything. The world remains as colorful and tasteful as before, just as painful with some pleasures. Only the superfluous colorless and tasteless fictitious entities are withdrawn from this picture. Nevertheless, such an attitude demands an authentic conversion, a renunciation of the mental and linguistic habits which the human species has developed since its origins. The proud ego of modern rationalistic philosophy, the Archimedean point of all certainty, has become a provisional combination of sensations, volitions, thoughts and feelings which migrate and join other combinations of elements endowed with a Bewusstseinsorgan and a Vorstellungsorgan (organ of representation). Mach recalls Lichtenberg’s aphorism according to which we should not say I think, but it thinks, and adds that the ego cannot be saved, das Ich ist unrettbar. Personal mortality is but a dream. Does not everyday experience teach that parts of ourselves die long before our death? On the other hand, however, being composed of the same elements as other complexes of elements, and having no sharp boundaries, “the ego can be so extended as to ultimately embrace the entire world”.27 The equally fictitious idea of causality – understood as real flowing from one body to another one – has to be explained in terms of functional dependence open to formulation in quantitative terms. Reformulated in this way, understanding causality continues to provide the impetus of all scientific research. Physical laws express what is abiding in nature: not the elements themselves, but the links between them.

1.7.3  Cognition and Representation Mach sets out to determine the origin and the cognitive function of our representations: “All science has for its aim the representation of facts in thought, either for practical ends, or for removing intellectual discomfort.”28 Upon other occasions, he insists on the adaptation of thought to facts, transferring a concept borrowed from biology to epistemology without further justification. As we have seen, sen-

 Ibid., p. 10.  Ibid., p. 153. Such intellectual discomfort can be produced by incompleteness, contradictions and other logical shortcomings.

27 28

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sations are the ultimate elements of our experience, the simplest elements of the world forming the basis of our physical concepts. Sensations alone, however, do not suffice to produce scientific knowledge. Without memory, our life would be a kaleidoscope, a sequence of unrelated mental states. It is memory that transforms sensations into representations, Vorstellungen, defined by Mach as “traces in the memory of earlier experiences which co-determine and weave further new complexes of sensations”. Mach does not acknowledge sharp boundaries between different sorts of mental acts; a continuous transition leads from sensations to intuitive representations, to ideas, ordinary concepts and eventually to scientific concepts. Sensations are more vivid, stronger; representations appear and disappear rapidly, combining into larger complexes or varying according to individual fantasies. While subjective representations respond to individual needs, concepts meet the intellectual needs of the human species. Like other representations, they have a physiological basis in sensory elements. They are produced by a similar configuration of sensations which create strong associations of representations directed towards biologically relevant behavior. Even animals have “seeds of concepts”, even if they do not have the corresponding linguistic terms at their disposal. Concepts are that element of human experience which subsumes objects to which we react in the same manner. The difference between the behavior of animals or prehistoric humans on the one hand, and civilized people on the other hand, consists only in the fact that the latter are able to perform a variety of testing and checking activities and to organize concepts into systems of hypotheses and theories. The adaptation of new facts to our theory finds its expression in the formation of judgments. Judgments consist primarily in the broadening, “supplementing or amendment of the deficiencies of a sensuous percept” by other sensuous percepts. Stored in memory, they become, according to Locke’s terminology, “intuitive knowledge”, the spontaneous recollection of facts. Two principles are at work in the further refinement of judgments: that of broad generalization and continuity and that of sufficient differentiation. Both contribute to selecting pertinent elements of perception. If the progressive mental adaptation embraces a great number of facts, the discovery of new facts, possibly incompatible with the earlier ones, can lead to new conscious and purposive adaptation. Such is the beginning of scientific investigation that involves comparison and differentiation of a number of instances falling into the same category. We examine the influence of varying factors in repeated experiences and, having formed abstract concepts, we are able to solve the given problem. We name concepts and accompany them with images. A word yields nothing but an impulse to perform a sensory operation and this is the mark of the concept. (Mach also counts as sensory operations the enumeration of the number of angles in the case of the concept of “heptagon”, or the identifications of factors when considering the concept “square number“). But “the concept is never a finished percept”,29 for the operation adds a new sensuous element not present earlier. The concept is “an instruction to test a given representation with

29

 Ibid., p. 162.

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respect to certain properties or to produce a representation having determinate properties”. Let us take the conic sections as an example. I cannot directly see that the ellipse, parabola, hyperbola are subsumed under that concept, but I can discover the fact by cutting a cone and by constructing the equation for conics. Is the latter operation also a sensory one? As the examples have shown, Mach considerably extends the notion of sensory operation; for him, it includes any operation involving counting or manipulation of signs. The operations performed by physicists and chemists are of course closer to sensory operations than those of mathematicians. The decisive moment in concept formation is abstraction, i. e. the separation and selection of sensory elements and complexes (form, color, material aspects, use and nature of the object) in accordance with our biological needs. Thus we learn to consider biologically relevant aspects of an experience separately. But the abstraction in question is not only a process of taking away, a negative operation, a refraining from attending to the sensuous elements which accompany the abstracted entity in the given complex; it is at the same time an adding process: “on the other hand, it is turned toward other and new sensuous elements”. The step from ordinary concepts to scientific ones consists in the intention. It is the intentional formation of concepts and their combinations that marks the beginning of scientific concepts. In scientific concepts the intellectual domination of nature reaches its peak. According to Mach, a scientific concept is “a precise and definite reaction-­activity, which enriches the fact with new sensuous elements”, more precisely “the consciousness of reactions that we expect from the class of objects designated by the concept-word“. Hence, a scientific concept is a mental complex more or less permanently connecting memories and expectations related to selected aspects of the behavior of an object. Let us take the concept of a chemical element, for example of natrium. It is a sum of expectations concerning atomic weight obtained by measurement, color, solubility in water etc., and similarly with mathematical, physical or biological concepts like “circle”, “intensity of current” or “whale”. To have a concept means to be able to submit it at any time to testing in order to obtain the expected reactions. A concept can always be traced back to intuitive elements, but such a link can be indirect or even only potential. The result of a physical investigation “is based upon an almost unending series of simple observations (sensations)”, because we must also take adjusting the experimental apparatus into account. In this way, the concept appears simultaneously as a condensation of previous experiences and as an instruction to test and to produce specific representations or sensations, a sequence of operations. Eventually, language contributes to stabilize the concepts and to form a conceptual system, a scientific theory. The following schema sums up Mach’s theory of mental objects (psychologische-­ Gebilde): (1) sensory experiences, sensations, (2) intuitive representations obtained by recollecting past experiences, (3) typical representations (even animals may have them; they are the “seeds of concepts”), (4) everyday empirical concepts obtained by abstraction from intuitive and typical representations. (5) scientific concepts.

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1.7.4  Science in Action For Mach, the unity of the physical and psychological dimensions is fundamental. Mathematics plays a secondary role in his theory of science which aims principally to connect sensory experiences to theoretical concepts. An excellent physicist and historian of physics, Mach was not a very good mathematician. Speaking of mathematics, he considers it simply an auxiliary instrument, not as a means to express the structure of physical theory. “All auxiliary conceptions, laws and formulas, are but quantitative norms, regulating my sensory representation of the facts. The latter is the end, the former are the means.” As we have seen, theoretical concepts transcend immediate experience. Mach explains the progressive distancing of theoretical concepts from sensory experience by a natural tendency inherent in our thoughts which are spontaneously impelled to complete all incompletely observed facts.[…] The impulse in a certain measure enriches the single fact. Through it the latter is more to us. By this impulse we have always a larger portion of nature in our field of vision.30

Although the world is constructed from sensory elements, our knowledge often complements them by formulating hypotheses which go far beyond our experience, extending the field of knowledge by extrapolation. We can mentally add elements which are not only absent from the sensory field, but which cannot even come into it. We can, e.g., imagine the moon as an inert heavy mass without any possibility of touching it. Another famous example is Mach’s principle which appeals to the action of all celestial bodies in order to explain the law of inertia. It is therefore necessary to make a sharp distinction between what we see and what we mentally supply. Only this distinction enables us to see old theories as obstacles for new discoveries. Here we already have Gaston Bachelard’s concept of epistemological obstacle. Mach cites many examples: the phenomena of conduction and exchange of heat, which led Black to the discovery of specific heat. But the same idea – the constant quantity of heat-substance – kept Black from realizing that heat can also be produced, as everybody knows, by friction. Huygens’ fundamental discovery of the undulatory theory of light prevented him at the same time from rightly grasping the phenomenon of polarization, which he himself discovered. The preconceived idea of fluids acting at distance on conductors stood in the way of the discovery of specific inductive capacity; only Faraday, a non-academic, could overcome the theoretical prejudices of other scientists. Mach insists that theories are only auxiliary instruments for definite purposes. They have no absolute value. Constancy plays a major role in Mach’s conception. Our expectations are based on it. Things (complexes of elements) are relatively constant and we have a natural tendency to think that they are always present, whether we perceive them or not. Chemical elements also appear unconditionally constant. We expect constant replies to our questioning in the entire realms of facts covering, for example, electricity,

30

 Ibid., p. 171.

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magnetism, light, heat. The notion of “electric body”, for instance, means for us expectations of a definite group of facts. On the other hand, the unity of nature does not permit us to isolate one specific fact or group of facts: “there is no such thing as a specific electrical fact […] all physical facts are made up, in ultimate analysis, of the same sensuous elements (colors, pressures, spaces, times)”.31 Completing our observation, we speak of the constancy of celestial bodies, and even of the whole past and future, the entire passage of time. Such projections are not well-founded, for unconditioned constancy of things does not exist. Here, Mach steps out of his world of ever-changing element-sensations to reach a structural point of view: “There is but one sort of constancy, which embraces all forms, namely, constancy of connection (or of relation)”.32 This constancy of relations is precisely what physical laws express. The constancy of thought consists in the impulse to complete observed facts and physics on its part formulates quantitative norms regulating our spontaneously flowing thoughts. The history of physics can thus be characterized by the increasing degrees of constancy. Whenever we have a special interest in the representation of facts, we endeavor to support and corroborate ideas of lesser constancy by ideas of greater constancy or to replace them by the latter.33

In analogy with already obtained results in mechanics, Newton conceived of the planets as projectiles. Similarly, Huygens (and many others) were guided by the analogy of sound in optics. As mechanics had become the paradigm for all natural science since the seventeenth century, scientists sought “to conceive electrical, optical, and thermal processes as mechanical processes”. We naturally prefer, as the foundation of this process, the strongest and most thoroughly tested thoughts, and these are given to us by our much exercised mechanical functions, which we may test anew at any moment without many or cumbersome appliances.34

Hence the authority of mechanical explanations, especially those by pressure and impact. Only one science can yield an even greater certainty, namely mathematics, because mathematical thought must conform to its own norms even if it grows from extraneous impulses. Mathematics invariably carries “most of the material for experimenting about with it”, as if internal mathematical experience imposed its norms on elements received from outside. A mathematical formula in physics, for example the sine law of refraction, “is a kind of geometrical model which simply imitates in form the refraction of light and takes its place in our mind”.35 For Mach, geometrical space is a structure both of space-elements and of physical elements: “it is by no means made up wholly of the system of space-sensations (of the senses of

 Ibid., p. 168.  Ibid., p. 169. 33  Ibid., p. 172. 34  Ernst Mach, Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre. Leipzig: J.A. Barth 1900, p. 184. 35  Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, op. cit., p. 187. 31 32

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sight and touch), but consists rather of a large body of physical observations, having the space-sensations as their point of departure”.36 The most important of such observations concerns the behavior of rigid bodies and the notion of superposition yielding congruence for measuring lengths and angles. “When we are compelled to imagine an isosceles triangle as having equal angles at its base, our compulsion is due to the remembrance of powerful past experiences.” Thus the geometer goes far beyond the space given by sight and touch which is not homogeneous. The Euclidian method, too, presupposes “abundant geometrical experiences”. “It serves to protect us from the possible errors which we have acquired”.37 Mach does not attribute particular importance to proofs and to the deductive structure of mathematics. “The memory of a given experience can reveal to the mind features which in the original observation escaped unnoticed”. Such is the power of geometrical imagination, which holds also for pure mathematics, even for arithmetic. “Even the theory of numbers must be looked at in some such manner; its fundamental propositions can hardly be viewed as entirely independent of physical experience”.38 And Mach almost literally repeats Bolzano’s remark, according to which the certainty of mathematics comes from the fact that its results “can very easily be tested on intuitions and experiences”: The cogency of geometry (and of all mathematics) is due, not to the fact that its theories are arrived at by some select and special kind of cognition, but only to the fact that the empirical material which is at its base is particularly convenient and handy, has been put to the test an untold number of times, and can be subjected again at any moment to the same tests.39

The same also holds for time: “When a physicist wishes to determine a period of time, he applies, as his instrument of measurement, identical processes or processes assumed to be identical, such as vibrations of a pendulum, the rotation of the earth etc.”40 The result of his measurement is a number.

1.7.5  The “true Master of the Vienna Circle” Mach wants to reconstruct the “natural world” of human experience, purified of theological and philosophical prejudices. At the same time, he tries to explain common sense realism in terms of the permanence of sensory complexes and the biological response of organisms to the challenges presented by their environment. But, unlike the phenomenologist’s world, Mach’s “natural world”, is not in opposition to the abstract world of modern science whose paradigm is mathematical physics. For Mach, the world of science, though organized according to specific human  Ibid., p. 177.  Ibid., p. 177n. 38  Ibid., p. 178. 39  Ibid. 40  Ibid., p. 179. 36 37

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needs, grows spontaneously out of original experiences. Mach’s thinking to a large extent anticipates further developments in the empiricist, pragmatist and evolutionist trends of the nineteenth century. His legacy, together with that of Bolzano, merged into the powerful current of analytical philosophy, represented in the first half of the twentieth century by the Vienna Circle and, as regards Bolzano, also by the Polish Lvov-Warsaw school.

1.8  T  homas Garrigue Masaryk: The Emancipation of Humanity During his long career, Masaryk was successively smith apprentice, student at the German Realschulein Brno, later student at the University of Vienna, a younger friend of Brentano and an older friend of Husserl, professor of philosophy at the Charles University, Czech politician, member of the Viennese Parliament, traitor of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, founder and first president of the Czechoslovak Republic, and during all his life a philosopher and sociologist who inspired Czech cultural life. Masaryk has remained a key figure of Czech philosophy and culture in spite of 6  years of German occupation and 41  years of communism during which his memory was obliterated (except the several years around the Prague Spring in 1968). Was he really a philosopher? Like his mentor Brentano, he repudiated German idealism and turned towards Europe, to French philosophy, especially Auguste Comte, and to the Britons Hume and John Stuart Mill. After his doctoral dissertation, he spent a year in Leipzig working with Wilhelm Wundt. In Leipzig, he met his future wife Charlotte Garrigue and also his compatriot Edmund Husserl, student of astronomy and mathematics. During their conversations, he initiated Husserl to philosophy. In 1936, Husserl remembers his friend: “With him, I followed lectures in philosophy, just to become well educated and not as a field of study. Being doctor, he was naturally more advanced than me and he helped me to understand things and suggested the way towards independent thinking” (Letter to F.  Jančík). The two friends met again in Vienna where Masaryk recommended Husserl to study philosophy with Brentano. They met regularly and after Masaryk’s appointment at the Charles University, they exchanged letters and maintained occasional contact. They kept mutual respect for their works. Nevertheless, Masaryk privately considered with astonishment the relentlessness of Husserl about minor problems and, on the other hand, according to the testimony of Patočka, Husserl declared that “Masaryk is not a philosopher, that he has neither a system nor a single original thought”.41

 František Svejkovský, T.  G. Masaryk ve vzpomínce filosofa 20. století E.  Husserla [Husserl‘s Memories of T.G. Masaryk]. Chicago: Čs. kult. Středisko Velehrad 1987.

41

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1.8.1  The First Philosophical Problem: Suicide For Masaryk, like later for Albert Camus, suicide is the first and most important philosophical problem. His book Suicide as a Social Mass Phenomenon of Modern Civilization (1881)42 begins with a definition of suicide and with a description of different forms of suicide. Masaryk examines police reports as well as statistics and compares the number of suicides according to country, political system, sex, age, religion, degree of education, degree of alcoholism, life style. Why does the number of suicides grow in modern times – in the nineteenth century? Masaryk the sociologist looks for reasons that cannot be found in police reports nor in the statistics. His diagnosis results from a certain philosophy of history: all great civilizations eventually achieve a degree of progress and refinement which makes suicide more frequent and more desirable and acceptable. This was the case with the Greek and Roman civilization where the stoics recommended suicide. With the loss of Christian faith and growing religious indifference, our own European civilization arrives at the end of its cycle: “As a social mass phenomenon, suicide is the fruit of progress, of education and of civilization”.43 One could object that what appears to be a rise in the number of suicides is simply due to the attention and publicity given to this phenomenon since the introduction of statistical methods by governments and administrations in the most advanced European countries in the eighteenth century. Masaryk adopts Comte’s and Novalis’ critique of modern civilization in his Christianity and Europe: the French revolution, prepared by the critical work of the Enlightenment, effected a rupture in the social harmony of traditional societies. The growth of suicides results from the loss of the unitary world view inherited from Christianity. The divorce between the deep moral aspirations of men and the disorder of modern society with its prisons, asylums for mentally alienated and their arms factories produced “a pathological state of general nervousness created and nourished by modern social institutions, which leads on the one hand to psychosis, on the other hand to suicide”. Masaryk finds a confirmation for his diagnosis in the correlation between the number of suicides and the degree of religious indifference in various European countries. In his book Le suicide (1897), Durkheim mentions Masaryk in his bibliography but does not quote him, maybe because he did not consider him a working empirical sociologist with new empirical results. Nevertheless, he uses Masaryk’s expression “pathological state” which “accompanies the development of civilization today”44 and arrives at similar conclusions when he speaks about societal derangement and the slow disintegration of social links. He also takes the religious factor into account (more suicides in Protestant countries because the Catholic Church and the Jews integrate their believers better).  Tomáš G.  Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung der Gegenwart. Wien: Verlag von Carl Konegen 1881. (In English published under the title Suicide and the Meaning of Civilization in 1970.) 43  Ibid., p. 166. 44  Emile Durkheim, Le suicide. Paris: P. U. F. 1896, p. 424. 42

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1.8.2  Under the Banner of Auguste Comte Masaryk’s most important theoretical work is The Essay of Concrete Logic,45 one of the last philosophical books treating the classification of sciences (Comte’s philosophy consists essentially in his classification of sciences on the basis of three stages of humanity’s development; thereafter this discipline ceased to interest philosophers and became an auxiliary of library science). Masaryk adopts Comte’s classification of sciences with important modifications. He admits sciences crossing the borders of Comte’s strict typology, which makes his classification more flexible, and criticizes three aspects of Comte’s scheme. Comte’s principal error is his phenomenalism which makes all sciences homogeneous and their hierarchy linear (Masaryk addressed the same objection to Hume and Kant and it could also be addressed to Mach). It is the root of all his other errors. Against phenomenalism, Masaryk advocates realism, “in philosophy and also in politics”; in the Conversations with Masaryk by Karel Čapek,46 he prefers the term concretism, the realism of concrete, individual things. The world is composed of individual beings and this is why the proper object of knowledge are particular things, individuals, living or not: this flying arrow, this metal in fusion, this animal. To know something means to know it in concreto, most exactly, most completely. The ultimate goal of our knowledge are real, concrete things in the world, the only one which we have. In the Conversations with Masaryk, Masaryk speaks like his old friend Husserl: “the true object and goal of knowledge is our world of unique beings and things, the only one given to us”.47 Nevertheless, we come to know them only by a detour to the general laws of abstract science. Masaryk shares Brentano’s aversion to abstract entities. Comte’s second error is to exclude psychology from his classification because he thinks its method, introspection, to be unreliable and unscientific. Here, Masaryk follows Brentano. For both, psychology is “essentially the science of consciousness”48 and all our knowledge must begin with the cogito of Descartes. There is a break, a rupture between natural and psychic phenomena and one cannot obliterate it in making psychology a discipline of physiology. Comte did not recognize that “every historical and social phenomenon is at the same time a psychical one” and his own arguments in favor of the priority of sociology are in fact also arguments in favor of psychology, the science that realizes the unity of our knowledge.

 Tomáš G. Masaryk, Versuch einer konkreten Logik. Wien: Verlag von Carl Konegen 1887. Here, Masaryk mentions Bolzano twice, pointing to his realistic position (p. 212) and explaining that “at that time, the title Theory of Science was by several philosophers understood as concrete logic” (p. 214). 46  Karel Čapek, Hovory s T.  G. Masarykem [Conversations with T.  G. Masaryk]. Praha: Československý spisovatel 1990. 47  Ibid., p. 226. 48  Versuch einer konkreten Logik, p. 117. 45

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The third point criticized by Masaryk is Comte’s separation of philosophy from scientific work. I think that the most important problem treated in Masaryk’s book is not the classification of sciences, but the place of philosophy in the general system of knowledge. Philosophy does not belong to the hierarchy of sciences, it is an over-embracing discipline, the motor of the classification. But isn’t the expulsion of philosophy behind the horizon of positive knowledge a sign of Masaryk’s latent positivism? The pages of the Concrete Logic where Masaryk questions the nature of philosophy belong to the most personal pages he has ever written. According to him, they are memories of real dialogues which he conducted with Robert Zimmermann, a disciple of Bolzano and professor at the University of Vienna, and as I believe, also with Husserl. Give me a philosophy as you can give me for instance the social system of Auguste Comte. What is the benefit to know that Comte, Descartes and others are philosophers? I study Descartes, I learn his views on mathematics, on biology, psychology, ethic, logic, etc. All these are scientific disciplines, but where is philosophy? –– Dear friend, that’s unfortunate: we still do not have treatises comparable to those of sciences – but take and study this one. –– So I study – and in order not to omit anything, I study the philosophers and some works on the history of philosophy, but at the end, I do not know more than at the beginning. I analyze a number of the definitions of philosophy, what a sad enterprise! The whole universe is perfectly divided; what remains for philosophy?49

Philosophy cares about the system of things in their totality, about the universe. Is it then “the collection of all sciences”? Is it an Encyclopedia? For Masaryk, this is impossible; his ideal is a specialized philosopher who studies his object  – but which one? – in relation with closely related disciplines, but also “in conscious relation with the universe, with the world in its totality”. In this point, the break with Comte is complete. The problem is not only to amend or to complete the Comtean hierarchy of sciences: Masaryk casts doubt on the concept of positive philosophy. According to Comte, a scientific philosophy should contain the most abstract and most general knowledge of the six abstract sciences of his classification: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology. Each scientist should work in his particular science viewing the totality of knowledge. The class of the generalists (= the philosophers, who are specialists of the generalities) collects the results of different sciences and specify their principles, their relations and their logical links. This is why a philosopher should also be a specialist in at least one domain of knowledge, but never loosing sight from the totality of knowledge. According to Masaryk we do not know if it is possible to create such a philosophy. It is the job of the scientist to determine the most abstract and most general knowledge. What remains to the philosopher is concrete logic, namely the task of establishing the system of sciences in abstracto and this is what Masaryk, following Comte’s example, is undertaking in his book. “Good philosophy does not possess knowledge superior to that of the sciences.”50 Even if philosophers cannot master all 49 50

 Masaryk, Versuch einer konkreten Logik, op. cit., p. 250.  Ibid., p. 263.

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sciences, they aim at general science. In his search for certainty, Masaryk ultimately privileges psychology, the discipline which Comte excluded from his hierarchy of sciences. Psychology realizes the synthesis of all sciences, because all cognition is a psychological act. Our intellectual state is a special mixture of myth and science with medieval philosophy on the right wing, modern science on the left wing, and conciliatory parties everywhere in between. It is true that the right wing and the center have a majority, but it is the left which leads the battalion. Gradually, Masaryk transgresses the ideal of positivist scientific philosophy and integrates the arts and religious elements into his world-view. Scientific knowledge is neither the only one nor the most important; it must be completed by the arts, which yield “the most elevated human knowledge”.51 Having reproached Comte for “having fantasized a whole positivist mythology”,52 he himself rallies traditional metaphysical and religious thought, enlightened by his adherence to Protestantism. Masaryk dreams of a new religion unifying the catholic creed of the heart and the protestant creed of reason. In another text, however, he writes that “religion cannot save us, only science can do it”.

1.8.3  Philosophy of Language Linguistics does not belong to Comte’s hierarchy of sciences, even in Masaryk’s reformed and completed form. Masaryk transfers into linguistics Comte’s distinction between the social static and social dynamic, making a difference between the historical study of languages and their static study, which is general grammar. This distinction and the methodological rule granting epistemological priority to the study of existing languages are decisive for the Prague Linguistic Circle. Vilém Mathesius, co-founder of the Circle with Roman Jakobson, adopted this distinction from Masaryk and developed it further in his article “About the potentiality of linguistic phenomena” written in 1911, before the Cours de linguistique générale de Saussure. In this sense, Czech structuralism is related by a tenuous but real link to the philosophy of Auguste Comte due to Masaryk’s mediation.

1.8.4  Masaryk, Philosopher of the Revolution Masaryk consecrated three great works to the phenomenon of revolution: The Social Question (1898  in Czech, 1899  in German) treats future revolution predicted by Marx, Russia and Europe (1913) the past Russian revolution of 1905, completed by

51 52

 Čapek, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, op. cit., p. 226.  Ibid., p 219.

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a short study On Bolshevism (1921), The World Revolution (1925) the fight for the new Czechoslovak State. Even The Czech Question with the characteristic subtitle Endeavors and Aspirations of National Revival (2nd ed. 1908) associates the formation of the modern Czech nation with “the European movement that induced the French revolution”.53 Masaryk’s thinking constantly returns to the Hussite revolution, one of the summits of Czech history. As president of the Republic, he also published an anonymous critical analysis of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, having immediately recognized its danger. Karl Popper considered Masaryk as “one of the greatest fighters for the open society”.54 In note 53 (p. 652), Popper continues: “Masaryk has been described sometimes as a ‘philosopher king’. But he was certainly not a ruler of the kind Plato would have liked; for he was a democrat. He was very interested in Plato, but he idealized Plato and interpreted him democratically. His nationalism was a reaction to national oppression, and he always fought against nationalistic excesses. […] Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia was probably one of the best and most democratic states that ever existed; but in spite of all that, it was built on the principle of the national state, on a principle which in this world is inapplicable. An international federation in the Danube basin might have prevented much.”55 The Social Question is a philosophical analysis of Marxism. Could someone expect that a philosopher would write a whole book about what was generally ­considered as an economical doctrine preaching revolution? Masaryk was one of the very first philosophers who took Marxism seriously. The subtitle of the work is quite explicit: Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of Marxism. By this work, I want to show that socialism and particularly Marxism is an attempt to build a whole philosophical system, that it is not only the question of political economy even if this question is the only one permanently discussed. It will become obvious that for our time and especially for the solution of the social question, Marxism is much more important than people generally admit. I believe that Marx and Engels will gain by my work even if I

 Tomáš G. Masaryk, Česká otázka – snahy a tužby národního obrození. Praha: Melantrich 1969. Several times, Masaryk recalls the merits of Bolzano for the Czech national revival: his influence on Havlíček (pp. 14 and 150), who published Bolzano’s last will (p.112), and on the Czech patriotic circles as well as his humanitarian goals (p. 51); Masaryk also mentions how Bolzano was removed from his University chair in 1819 (p. 129). 54  The Open Society and its Enemies, Chinese reprint of the 1956 edition, p. 246. I recall Popper’s voice when I made an interview with him in the last years of his life and he spoke about the principle of self-determination of nations: “Das ist eine Dummheit”, it’s a stupidity. 55  Popper would have been very honored if he could have become a member of the Vienna Circle. This did not happen because Schlick never invited him. “The Circle itself was, so I understood, Schlick’s private seminar, meeting on Thursday evenings. Members were simply those whom Schlick invited, and I never fished for an invitation.” (Unended Quest, Fontana Paperbacks, 1982 p. 84 and Note 106, p. 212). Brian McGuinness told me, that, being obliged to accept Neurath, a founding member of the pre-war so called First Vienna Circle, Schlick did not want to have another killjoy inside the Circle. Popper’s Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) was nevertheless accepted for publication in the series Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung and appeared in 1934 (imprint 1935). 53

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refute their method and their philosophy. They oblige us to discuss many problems which have not been mentioned in the literature about Marxism until now.56

This work is topical even today, above all today as Marxists have still not explained why the communist system collapsed. Masaryk explains that the reasons of its collapse were already inscribed in the project of its founders. In his work, Masaryk thoroughly examines Marx’ formation, his lectures and the influence she underwent. In brief, from a German Hegelian, Marx became a French-­ English positivist economist. Further, the influence of Feuerbach should not underestimated, especially of his atheism. Feuerbach wants to “realize God in transforming him into man”. Feuerbach’s God is a fictitious, illusory man; one has to give him back his humanity, to transform him into a sensible man, political and social. One also finds in Feuerbach some ideas which always embellished the window displays of Marxism: the criterion of praxis, the idea that philosophy should become the property of the masses, the necessity of a complete political and social revolution which everybody should accept even if it is unjust and factionalist, parteilich. Feuerbach speaks about “the communitary, communist man”, but he wants a “reasonable” communism. According to Masaryk, Marx was most influenced by positivism rather than by different socialist doctrines. Positivism helped the young Marx to eliminate utopist elements. Already Feuerbach and even Schopenhauer were positivists whose philosophy originated in “the father of modern positivism”, Hume. From 1843 to 1845, Marx lived in France. He applied Comte’s concept of fetishism to goods, which become “the objective appearance of the social determinations of works”.57 Most importantly, positivism opens the door to the study of economy. Also Marx and Engels often mean positivism when they speak about “materialism”: it is an anti-­ metaphysical philosophy which admits natural science as the dominant science. Marx’ and Engels’ criticism of German philosophy is well-known: German philosophy is vague, ideological, and alienated from real life. At the same time, both Marx and Engels praise French and British philosophy. Both are wrong, however: German philosophy is essentially historical and critical, with Herder and Lessing as examples, not to speak about Kant who undertook the necessary criticism of metaphysics. Besides, both praise Kant for having introduced and practiced dialectics. The Ego of Fichte also implies the moral and political appeal of the man who rose up against Napoleon, not to speak about Hegel to whom both Marx and Engels are much indebted. Naturally, this picture needs some corrections. For Masaryk, who could not know the early writings of Marx, Marxism is something like a positivist Hegelianism. He discerns an evolution in the writing of The Capital: the first volume is more ideological, the third one (completed and published by Engels according to Marx’ manuscripts) more realistic. For the majority of the critics of Marxism (e.g. for Sartre), Engels’ dialectics implied in the natural processes is highly problematic. According 56 57

 Tomáš G. Masaryk, Otázka sociální. Praha: Jan Laichter 1898, vol. I, Pref., p.VII.  Karl Marx, The Capital I. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co. 1906, chap. 1, p. 4.

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to Engels’ Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature, the dialectics is in the things themselves, nature itself operates infinitesimal calculus. Even Eugen Dühring comes out of the story better than Engels himself (Otto Neurath praised Dühring as philosopher and historian of science). The heart of The Capital is the theory of surplus value. It is grounded in the following proposition: only labor can produce value and value is defined as work measurable by its duration. As a consequence, neither the capitalist nor the merchant works. Labor has an absolute value. But a passage in volume III contradicts volume I: “The true wealth of a society does not depend on the duration of the surplus labor, but on productivity and on the more or less rich conditions in which takes place the production”.58 Eventually, Marx recognized the decisive influence of the offer and of the competition and admitted that the proletariat “can arrive at its goals by peaceful means”.59 Masaryk recognized the importance of historical materialism, but showed that the materialist interpretation of art and of religion does not do justice to their specificity. It makes no sense to try to explain Dante’s poetic inspiration, Michelangelo’s creative power or Newton’s scientific work by economic conditions. It is precisely the unilateral character of Marxist explanations that impresses Masaryk: he criticizes it and is fascinated by it at the same time. There are other philosophers and scientists in the Czech lands who contributed to spread a philosophy inspired by science: the physiologist Jan E. Purkyně, some Brentanians (the Gestalt psychologist Christian von Ehrenfels, the linguist and philosopher of language Anton Marty) and, in spite of his aversion towards Mach’s and the Vienna Circle’s philosophical style, also the philosopher-biologist Emanuel Rádl.

1.9  Conclusion The imagined Prague Vienna Circle developed and discussed most of the theories that were constructed by the members of the real Vienna Circle in the twentieth century. It is surprising how immensely such a small country as Moravia contributed to philosophy and science in the nineteenth and twentieth century in the domains of modern genetics, modern physics, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and modern logic. This is principally the work of the Moravian Germans Mach, Husserl, Freud, and Gödel (two of them were Jews), and the Czechs Řehoř (Gregor) Mendel and Thomas Masaryk. We also have to take into account the sojourn of Einstein in Prague during the years 1911–1912 where he created the general theory of relativity, and that of Carnap from 1931 to 1935, years during which he wroteTheLogical Syntax of Language. The Czech lands were the incubator of our modernity.

58 59

 Karl Marx, The Capital III. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co. 1909, chap. 2, p. 335.  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke XVIII. Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1956-, p. 161.

Chapter 2

Why Czech Positivism Could Not Be Absorbed by Logical Positivism Miloš Kratochvíl

In its heyday, Czech positivism was called “the maternal philosophy of all Czech philosophies, the “Czech national philosophy”1 and a philosophy “of all-nation importance”.2 Although these assertions are a bit exaggerated and they perhaps express more the desires of their authors than any reality, Czech positivism nevertheless played a very important role in the history of Czech philosophy. And in certain periods of its development, it was in fact perceived as the dominant philosophy. After the years of philosophical dominance (1900s–1920s), Czech positivism suffered a crisis (1920s–1930s). But since logical positivism was geographically connected to the Czech territory in the period of its birth and early development, one would thus expect that the later versions of positivism would become easily and firmly established within Czech positivism. This, however, did not happen, which meant the philosophy of the Vienna Circle was not assimilated into Czech positivism at all. For an explanation, we must look back to the main and specific features of Czech positivism and of its evolution.

 František Fajfr, “Česká filozofie za rok 1926–27”, in: Česká mysl, 1928, p. 51.  Jiřina Popelová, Filosof František Krejčí. Praha: Nakladatelství národní práce 1942, p. 5.

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2.1  Positivist Touches in Czech Herbartism The evolution of Czech positivism is usually divided into three periods.3 The first one is the period of reception, occurring between the 1870s and 1890s, during which time Czech Herbartians, led by Josef Durdík, tried to establish a “scientific philosophy”. This was a reaction to Hegelianism; Comte, Mill and Spencer are frequently mentioned within this movement. Durdík was convinced that the growing quantity and specialisation of knowledge needed unification and order, a task which philosophy was determined to carry out. Grounded in the results of science, philosophy was charged with the task of constructing a firm and unified conception of the world and of life.4 This first period is often also described as a purely preparatory stage. I do not wholly agree since some of the main elements and, indeed, part of the agenda of Czech philosophy (not only positivism) had already been established by this time. Philosophy was called on to provide a unified and scientifically based conception of the world. Not only did it contain a method of knowing the world through a synthesis of knowledge, it also integrated ethics in the form of a set of norms and values, which did not result from metaphysical and subjective speculations, but from science. Philosophy essentially depends on science. In the age of Durdík, it was assumed that philosophy had suffered a crisis. However, philosophy would only decline if science failed, and Durdík did not see any sign of this. On the contrary, science in fact flourished. The progress of science was not a defeat, but a victory for philosophy. In his article O domnělém úpadku filosofie (On the Alleged Decline of Philosophy, 1872) he criticised the identification of philosophy with Hegelian thought. He agreed (and welcomed) the concept that Hegelianism was forced to retreat. But this was not the end of philosophy, just as the refusal of scientific theory was not the end of science. The search for a complete conception of the world led Durdík to deal with the philosophy of science. He studied the role of hypotheses in science. In his opinion, hypotheses were indispensable parts of science and all scientific truths were originally hypotheses of some kind. In his article on the classification of the sciences, he rejects the traditional dualistic criteria (inductive sciences  – deductive sciences, exact sciences – human sciences, explanative sciences – descriptive sciences, theoretical sciences – practical sciences, etc.), since these pairs are mutually compatible and, in reality, present in each science. Durdík states that “the alleged opposite of those methods is an old preconception.”5 That is why these criteria could not be the basis for any classification of the sciences. According to Durdík, Comte’s classification of the sciences, with its objective simplicity and complexity, was the best available at the time. Indeed, no  Jiří Cetl, Český pozitivismus. Brno: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně v Brně 1981.  Josef Durdík, Rozpravy filosofické. Praha: I.L. Kober 1876, p. 8. 5  Ibid., p. 12. 3 4

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classification of any sort could be definitive, since there were spheres of knowledge which had not even reached their scientific stages. Nevertheless, these spheres were important for building up a firm and unified conception of the world and of life: the fulfilment of philosophy’s principle task. In other words, science could not answer all the questions people asked. People kept looking for these answers, but there was a risk that this search would be reduced to mysticism, especially in the case of moral principles, which belonged to disciplines that had not yet transferred to the sciences. There was an expectation that, sooner or later, sciences like psychology or sociology would become the pillars of ethics. But before that could happen, there would always be a certain amount of metaphysics attached. For Durdík, however, this was not sufficient reason to refute them. He believed it was a mistake of Comte’s not to place psychology and ethics among the sciences; indeed, because of this he became swamped by the new mysticism.6 The main reproach towards Comte’s classification of the sciences was that it only included the sciences of the “outer world” to the exclusion of the sciences of the “inner world”. Accordingly, Comte’s classification was seen as incomplete, and could only be completed by replacing it with another classification, which would contain logic, history, psychology, aesthetics, ethics and sociology. These sciences were, however, somewhat present in Comte’s work, so it still remains unclear what Durdík exactly had in mind. Most likely, he perceived these sciences as ones that dealt with human constructs. At any rate, there was no place for metaphysics in any of the classification of the sciences (of the inner or outer worlds), precisely because the classifications themselves were metaphysical products. Metaphysics was not a science of the inner or outer world, but a science whose subject was science itself.7 For Durdík, metaphysics was not only possible; it was necessary, in that it was an undeniably natural need of the human mind. Durdík’s philosophy, however, was not (and did not wish to be) positivistic. It was still rooted in Herbartism, even if inflected with positivist tones. But these tones had a series of relevant consequences. The first pertained to the fact that French positivism only presented itself as part of Czech philosophy after a significant delay (the need for scientific philosophy was partially satisfied by Czech Herbartism). The second related to the notion that after positivism was installed in Czech philosophy it became far and away the most dominant philosophical stream. After all, Czech Herbartism had prepared the ground for its reception and was the strongest school in Czech philosophy of the late nineteenth century. It was open to absorbing the new philosophical impulses coming from abroad as well as the new advances of science. In this sense, it replaced the positivism of the 1870s and 1880s. The real positivism (whether Comte, Mill or Spencer) had gained acceptance only by the end of the century.8

 Ibid., p. 157 n.  Ibid., p. 163. 8  Josef Zumr, Máme-li kulturu, je naší vlastí Evropa. Herbartismus a česká filosofie. Praha: Filosofia 1998, p. 53. 6 7

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The first author to intentionally promote positivism as an autonomous philosophy (and not as an ingredient in something else, e.g. Herbartism) was Josef Mikš. He is sometimes assumed to be the very first Czech positivist in the full sense of the word.9 Such an evaluation is supported by his article from 1876, Věda a filosofie se stanoviska positivismu (Science and Philosophy From the Standpoint of Positivism).10 Here, Mikš stresses the contrast between the new philosophy and the old philosophy, that is, between positivism and Hegelianism. The latter was not perceived only as a philosophy: it was also a symbol of the old political order and its obsolete views. He shared his antipathy to Hegelianism with the Herbartians, but unlike them, his sources were gleaned from Mill, Spencer and Lewes. However, it is important not to overestimate his influence, especially in assuming that Mikš was the first Czech positivist. After all, he was only twenty-three at the time and this was the only article in which he wrote about positivism. A much more influential figure in the history of Czech philosophy, although not a supporter of positivism itself, was T.G. Masaryk.

2.2  Masaryk’s Philosophy and Positivism Masaryk is undoubtedly the most influential Czech philosopher. Czech philosophy of the twentieth century is impossible to understand without Masaryk’s philosophy. Despite the fact that Masaryk considered himself to be an adversary of positivism, he is sometimes classified as one of the most prominent positivists;11 indeed, positivism is seen as the groundwork for his philosophy.12 Masaryk can thus be simultaneously viewed as both an adherent and critic of positivism. Indeed, both are correct since through Masaryk’s philosophy positivism, at least within the Czech philosophical tradition, had been philosophically negated even before it had branched out from its roots.13 This ambiguity relates not only to Masaryk’s philosophy, but becomes more generally noticeable in the Czech philosophy of the first decades of the twentieth century. Any attempt to describe it in terms of opposites, such as “scientists versus idealists”, “positivists versus metaphysicians”, and so on, would surely fail. Jiřina Popelová remarks that most of the Czech philosophers did not fit into any of those categories, adding: “we have a positivist nostalgia for idealism.”14

 Josef Král, Československá filosofie. Nástin vývoje podle disciplín. Praha: Melantrich 1937, p. 43.  Josef Mikš, “Věda a filosofie se stanoviska positivismu”, in: Osvěta, 1876, p. 176. 11  Emanuel Rádl, “Profesor dr. František Krejčí”, in: Česká mysl, 1928, p. 493. 12  Josef Král, Československá filosofie. Nástin vývoje podle disciplín, op. cit, p. 45. 13  Jiří Cetl, Český pozitivismus, op. cit, p. 56. 14  Jiřina Popelová, Studie o současné české filosofii. Praha: Jos. R. Vilímek 1946, p. 8. 9

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Masaryk’s philosophical expectations were similar to those of Durdík. According to Masaryk, the aim of philosophy was to provide a unified and firm conception of the world and of life. He expected that philosophy could help to overcome religious, moral and social crises and to remove spiritual anarchy, which lay at the root of social disorder.15 Although this idea is Comtean in nature, Masaryk was nevertheless an opponent of his brand of positivism.16 Some authors conclude that the tasks set by Masaryk and Comte were the same: both wished to overcome social disorder by removing its spiritual counterpart, which, for both authors included both intellectual and religious aspects. For example, Josef Král states: The goal, which Comte wanted to reach by his positive philosophy with sociology as a main tool, Masaryk tried to achieve by an unified and scientific world and life conception with religion as a central power.17

František Fajfr also highlighted the parallels between Masaryk and Comte. Both authors, according to Fajfr, started out by making diagnoses of their times, and both were convinced that society had radically changed, bringing new kinds of problems. And yet both were well aware that these problems could not be solved by reviving the old order.18 Comte designated the stage of politics as a metaphysical one. The previous, theological stage had been overcome, but the metaphysical stage of his time would be a purely preparatory one and only led to destruction. It could not build anything new, since this stage was only a negative one with no positive solution. The immediate result of this metaphysical, negative stage was anarchy, which would result in political, social and moral order and earmark a deeper, spiritual crisis. As Fajfr observes: What really matters is the crisis of ideas, the revolution of the world and life conception. And because the social mechanism is grounded in ideas, the crisis of ideas is the cause of political crisis.19

According to Comte, the crisis starts with the crisis of Catholicism. In contrast, Protestantism, in his view, was based on its negation and, therefore, nothing more than an interlude; a transitory period. It broke down the old order without any consideration for what would take its place. Fajfr, in his comparative study of Masaryk and Comte, also states that, for Masaryk, the crisis of modern man was a result of spiritual anarchy. In the absence of a unified conception of the world and of life, or without firm religion, we are left 15  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Základové konkrétné logiky. Praha: Masarykův ústav AV ČR, Ústav T. G. Masaryka 2001, p. 179. 16  For example: Tomáš G.  Masaryk, Pokus o konkrétní logiku. Praha: Masarykův ústav AV ČR, Ústav T. G. Masaryka 2001, p. 225, or Tomáš G. Masaryk, Světová revoluce. Praha: Orbis a Čin 1925, p. 125, etc. 17  Josef Král, Masaryk, filosof humanity a demokracie. Praha: Orbis 1947, p. 99. 18  The tendency to present Masaryk as a positivist might be motivated by the desire to support positivism (Jiří Gabriel, Filozofie Josefa Tvrdého. Brno: Univerzita J. E. Purkyně v Brně 1982, p. 34). 19  František Fajfr, Masaryk a Comte. Kdyně: Okresní sbor osvětový 1925, p. 17.

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with a modern social disease.20 Masaryk, as a sociologist, studied the causes behind the increase in the suicide rate – his main sociological concern and the subject of one of his most important books, Sebevražda (Suicide as a Social Mass Phenomenon of Modern Civilization) published in 1881. In this book, he states that “the real cause of the current suicide rate is today’s non-religiousness.”21 Both Masaryk and Comte found similar sources of the social crisis. These sources consisted in breaking down the unified understanding of the world. And as both of them knew that a return to the past was not possible (or desirable), their attention quite naturally led to the systematic organisation of scientific knowledge, from which the new spiritual order had to grow. The importance of a scientifically based conception of the world was not only Masaryk’s chief preoccupation, but also that of Czech philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth century. Up until this point, resemblances between Masaryk and Comte might seem to have prevailed. But the ways in which these two thinkers realised their projects were very different, and led to very different results. One of the points of incompatibility lies in their attitudes to psychology. Masaryk (in agreement with most Czech philosophers of the period, whether positivist or not) reproached Comte for not including psychology among the positive sciences. Certainly, a charge of anachronism can be levelled here since the psychology of the 1880s (and later) was a very different animal to the psychology of the 1830s. According to Comte, psychology could only be based on physiology; otherwise, it would not be a science and merely metaphysics, or even theology. But there was no scientific psychology, as such, during his lifetime and what he called “psychology” was mainly interpreted in a spiritual sense. He contended that it was impossible to study functions while ignoring the organ. No “psyche” could be independent of its bodily organs, and consequently no science could describe it. Comte also criticised its method, arguing that no science could be grounded on introspection. In Masaryk’s time, on the other hand, psychology had already been established as an autonomous science with its own subject and its own methods. Masaryk regarded introspection as an empirical method.22 But there is much more involved here than just a simple controversy over psychological methods. According to Masaryk’s classification of the sciences, psychology occupied top spot because, from an epistemological perspective, psychology (not sociology) served as the basis of all human sciences23 and consequently of scientific philosophy in general.24 Masaryk thought the naturalisation of psychology to be mistaken and that consciousness could never be explained by the natural sciences. That is why he refuted Comte’s effort to treat psychology more as a study of brain function than as a study

 Ibid, p. 23.  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Sebevražda. Praha: Masarykův ústav AV ČR 2002, p. 78. 22  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Základové konkrétné logiky, op. cit., p. 83. 23  Ibid., p. 86. 24  Ibid., p. 179. 20 21

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of the soul. Psychology, as a science dealing with individual consciousness, individual thought and individual emotions, was extremely important for Masaryk’s philosophy. Its task was to provide a unified conception of the world and to defend morality against relativism and agnosticism of all kinds. The argument that Comte was a collectivist and Masaryk an individualist25 has two basic dimensions: one, political; the other, epistemological. Masaryk was confident that psychology could provide what Comte had expected of sociology. Because Comte reduced psychology to biology, he underrated the fact that social and historical phenomena were still, above all, psychological phenomena. Thus, the unifying science could not be sociology, only psychology.26 In Masaryk’s view, Comte’s classification of the sciences was purely objectivistic: By extinguishing psychology as an autonomous science and by subordinating it to biology, he made his classification objectivistic. It was a classification of man-observer, of man observing the world from his own, positivistic theatre armchair (…) But this observer needs also to look into himself. That is what Comte had forgotten.27

And that is why there was no place for linguistics, logic or aesthetics in Comte’s classification. Following on from Durdík, Masaryk offered a twofold classification, of which the first contained the natural sciences and the second, the human. The sources of Masaryk’s individualism, which contrast with Comte’s collectivism, are embedded in his Protestantism. The search for a method was thus not only a matter of epistemology or an aim of philosophy, but only one step towards it. Masaryk believed that the core of philosophy was not epistemology, but ethics.28 The construction of a unified conception of the world would need to embrace the concepts of society, politics and justice. This way of thinking would have a practical impact, much like how Comte saw things. But Masaryk’s philosophy of history would result in democracy, in opposition to the old and overthrown period of mankind, which was characterised by a conception of the world based on revealed religion. On the political level, it produced theocracy or aristocracy. On the other hand, science was an epistemic tool; a way of thinking producing and improving democracy.29 This very close connection of political and philosophical thinking is crucial for the subsequent development of Czech positivism. Czech positivists were Masarykians when it came to politics, but differed when it came to philosophy. This was why Czech positivism had never been a “pure” positivism: it always contained psychological, social, political and moral dimensions. Similarly, the controversy between the positivists and idealists of Czech philosophy during the first decades of

 František Fajfr, Masaryk a Comte, op. cit., p. 91.  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Základové konkrétné logiky, op. cit., p. 161. 27  Tomáš G. Masaryk, “Rukověť sociologie” in: Naše doba, 1901, p. 7. 28  Tomáš G. Masaryk, “Ke klasifikaci věd”, in: Česká mysl, 1902, p. 2. 29  Josef Král, Masaryk, filosof humanity a demokracie, op. cit., p. 9. 25 26

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the twentieth century was always going to be a controversy between Masarykian and anti-Masarykian politics. Philosophically, Masaryk considered himself a “fundamental adversary of positivism.”30 Positivism intentionally gave up on the search for the knowledge of first and final causes. At a phenomenal level, it reduced the scope of human knowledge to a collection of regularities. In Masaryk’s view, Comte claimed that: the modern people of the 19th Century are positivists, who are not interested in the knowledge of causes. But in reality it is the other way around: modern people strive for this kind of knowledge, just as their pre-modern predecessors did. But no one can prohibit the human craving for causes.31

In this author’s view, rigorous positivism is impossible. There is no way to stop people asking about first causes and final purposes. The statement which declares that they are unknowable is not a positive one, but purely negative and, by extension, metaphysical. It is also one that is free of originality given that it had already been claimed by Hume and Kant.32 In his book, Světová revoluce (1925), Masaryk is most explicit about his attitude to positivism: “Sometimes people say that my philosophy was strongly influenced by Comte. I would admit this as far as my sociology is concerned. But his positivism is noetically too naive.”33 One might speculate that not only would Masaryk have disagreed with Comte, but Comte would have disagreed with Masaryk. Both authors were convinced that the times in which they lived were in deep crisis and both were also convinced that this was caused by both spiritual anarchy and the absence of any guiding conception of the world. These are the reasons why they tried to found a system of sciences in order to obtain knowledge that would be mutually verifiable and useful. The difference between them does not only relate to the law of classification of the sciences (and the role and place of psychology); it also concerns the three-stage law. Masaryk’s philosophy of history uses the conflict between mythos and science as a tool. The mythical stage (way of thinking) interweaves theocracy, the supremacy of religion over science, theology over critical thinking, and the notion of spiritual and social subjection. This stage is characterised by the predominance of Catholicism. The scientific stage, on the contrary, encompasses democracy, the predominance of critical and free-thinking, spiritual and social freedom and individualism. This stage is characterized by the predominance of Protestantism. Masaryk’s political philosophy was closely connected to the philosophy of science. He was convinced that development would travel from theocracy and aristocracy to democracy. He knew this to be not a philosophical statement, but a sociological fact. He described the past as lacking freedom, full of obedience and hypocrisy, replete with revolution and conservatism. The future, Masaryk believed,  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Pokus o konkrétní logiku, op. cit., p. 225.  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Moderní člověk a náboženství. Praha: Masarykův ústav AV ČR 2000, p. 63. 32  Ibid., p. 66. 33  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Světová revoluce, op. cit., p. 124. 30 31

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would be full of freedom, activity, morality, optimism, reformation and democracy. Mythos and science would not only be two ways of understanding the world, but two lifestyles. They would not only be theoretical, but also practical, approaches to the world. But the unified conception of the world could not be provided by science itself; that was a task for philosophy. Theological philosophy had now been demoted and scientific philosophy would take its place. But in contrast to positivism, Masaryk did not deny metaphysics: along with philosophy, they were two synonymous notions for him.34 There is at least one observation that deserves to be made here. J.  L. Fischer notes that Masaryk’s scientific stage bore all the traces of Comte’s metaphysical stage, yet revealed no trace of his positive stage. Individualism, which was perhaps the most significant feature of Comte’s metaphysical (negative, and destructive) stage, was, for Masaryk, hope for the future. Masaryk was consistent in his individualism, in his philosophy, his politics and his religion. If Comte could have evaluated this philosophy, most likely he would have assumed it as a type of metaphysics that had not reached the positive stage.35 Now, even before we come to the second and third periods of Czech positivism, we might posit that the main features of Czech positivism are as follows: The purpose of philosophy is to provide a unified and firm conception of the world and of life, both in theory and in practice; ethics is seen as an inextricable part of positivism (Czech positivists were well aware that scientific psychology was an essential part of this mix); the most eminent proponents of Czech positivist philosophy were psychologists (Krejčí), sociologists (Král) and educationalists (Drtina, Čáda) and, significantly, all students of Masaryk.

2.3  Psychology as a Core of Positivism The second period of Czech positivism (1900s – 1920s) is sometimes called “the period of František Krejčí”, who became one of the most influential philosophers, and undoubtedly the most positivist philosopher and psychologist. His positivism was much closer to that of Spencer than of Comte, but not in relation to their political ideas. The outline of Krejčí’s positivism can be drawn by comparing it with other versions of positivism. He differentiated between French and English positivism, considering French positivism to be a thing of the past. In 1904, when his survey on contemporary philosophy O filosofii přítomnosti (The Philosophy of the Present) was published, he wrote that only English positivism was still relevant. The reason for this was again attributed to the role of psychology. Without science, philosophy could not accomplish its task of providing a complete conception of the world.

34 35

 Tomáš G. Masaryk, Základové konkrétné logiky, op. cit., p. 149.  Josef L. Fischer, “Dvě kapitoly k Masarykově sociologii”, in: Sociologická revue, 1930, p. 26.

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According to Krejčí, Comte dropped in materialism because he had made psychology part of biology. But given that materialism is incompatible with positivism, even Comte did not persist but fell into mysticism. Instead of providing a scientific conception of the world, he offered only a new religion.36 Czech idealist philosophers often reproached positivism for its alleged materialism. However, Krejčí assumed this criticism erroneous since positivism had nothing in common with materialism, despite the seduction it held for some positivists.37 Positivism became, for him, almost a synonym for the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. While Comte was a philosopher of the past, Krejčí deemed Spencer to be a person who could give shape to contemporary philosophy, that is, the philosophy of around 1900.38 It is obvious that Krejčí absorbed the basic notions of Spencer’s philosophy, whether the idea of evolution, psychophysical parallelism, the notion of the “unknowable” or the conception of ethics.39 Krejčí identified the causes behind positivism’s expansion very clearly, as well as the causes leading to its descent. One of the main contributing factors to the success of positivism was undoubtedly the development of the natural sciences. Krejčí was interested mainly in German philosophy and science. Post-Kantian Naturphilosophie broke down under the pressure of scientific discoveries. Its distrust of philosophy was accompanied by an unlimited and uncritical confidence in science, which was perceived as the ideal building ground for a new conception of the world.40 The victory of positivism was enhanced by the creation of psychology as an autonomous science. Psychology was the last refuge of metaphysics: Metaphysics, already being expelled out of natural sciences, crept into psychology (…) Idealists now combat positivism with psychology and persistently prevent its scientification.41

Up until this point, it might seem that Krejčí’s intention was to replace philosophy with science. This, however, was not his view. He believed that positive philosophy would replace science and deal with the issues that were traditionally the preserve of religion: the meaning of life, morality, an understanding of the world, politics, etc. After all, positivism worshipped something akin to a god: The god [of positivism] is the unknowable transcendence. The scientific method leads to an assumption of some first cause. Scientific knowledge would not have sense without this assumption. The assumption of first cause is a necessary conclusion of the scientific method of causal explanation.42

 František Krejčí, O filosofii přítomnosti. Praha: Jan Laichter 1904, p. 177.  Ibid., p. 175. 38  Ibid., p. 216. 39  Vladimír Tardy, “Osobnost Františka Krejčího”, in: Československá psychologie, 3/ 1958, p. 210. 40  František Krejčí, Filosofie posledních let před válkou. Praha: Jan Laichter 1930, p. 12. 41  Ibid., p. 14. 42  Ibid., p. 61. 36 37

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The “unknowable” nature of science (an idea inspired by Spencer) was not a religious god simply by virtue of its unknowability. Even though this does not seem to be a key concept of positivism; in this case it is. Krejčí’s philosophical system, all of his views on the universe, nature and mankind, including his views on mental phenomena and morality, are all imbued by this idea. The following quotation is very typical of Krejčí, in that it already anticipates why logical positivism could not offer what Czech positivists needed: “The unknowable necessity, which generated the diversity in the world, which generated organic individuals out of inanimate substance and which, on a certain degree of evolution, made them conscious, is also at the origin of morality.”43 Here, we see the nostalgia of the Czech positivist for this particular form of idealism. Krejčí lamented the presence of any positivist philosopher or philosophical school of real importance during his life. Surprisingly, he may have thought that the most powerful positivism was present in psychology; the “science” that Auguste Comte deemed unworthy of classification. Krejčí perceived empirical psychology as “the strongest fortification of positivism”44 because one of its principles was so-­ called psychophysical parallelism. This principle, revered and passionately defended by Krejčí, offered the most solid basis for formulating a complete conception of the world. In accordance with Masaryk, and in contradiction to Comte, psychology was the main source of data for philosophy. Krejčí’s system placed psychology at the core of positivism.45 Following in the footsteps of Durdík, Masaryk criticised the omission of psychology in Comte’s classification of the sciences. Durdík, donning his Herbartian cap, was convinced that Herbart’s psychology was the only real psychology and that it sufficed as a satisfactory replacement for Hegelianism. Masaryk did not deal so much with psychology itself: in fact, he only paid attention to its role and its place within the system of knowledge. In comparision with both figures, Krejčí was an icon of Czech psychology at the turn of the century (and the author of a six-volume edition, Psychology). Krejčí agreed with some of the reasons for Comte’s criticism of psychology. He agreed that the only method of obtaining data was through self-observation. But, while for Comte, this was enough to exclude psychology from science, Krejčí tried to modify introspection and to remove, or at least, to compensate for its deficiencies. Therefore, psychology was made into a viable science, verified by mutual inspection, and the observation of bodily and facial expressions and pathological phenomena, etc.46 Krejčí called Comte “the destroyer of psychology…when he tried to build up a new world conception, he was hit by a Nemesis for he abandoned psychology. He

 František Krejčí, Positivní etika. Praha: Jan Laichter 1922, p. 69.  František Krejčí, Filosofie posledních let před válkou, op. cit., p. 106. 45  František Krejčí, “Glosy k nynější filosofii u nás”, in: Česká mysl, 1913, p. 229. 46  František Krejčí, Základy psychologie. Praha: Dědictví Komenského 1902, p. 42. 43 44

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was forced to go against his own principles of positivism and scientific empirical work and without it he had to resort to metaphysical speculations.”47 One of the central topics of Krejčí’s psychology is the relation between the physical and the psychical. Krejčí tried to avoid both spiritualism and materialism, which he discarded as metaphysical conceptions. Positivism was erroneously considered identical to materialism, with arguments against the latter being used against the former. Krejčí was convinced that he had solved this problem the empirical way. The first empirical fact and the first principle are bound up in the phenomenal dualism of the psychical and the physical, where both are treated empirically. Indeed, their difference is treated in the same way: “The definition, or the explanation of the difference between the psychical and the physical phenomena, is purely empirical; it is nothing more than a statement of facts.”48 The difference between the psychical and the physical is not identical to the difference beween the ideal and the real because, in this case, both are real. Krejčí tried to avoid idealism along with realism and metaphysics was not part of the equation. The second empirical fact relates to psychophysical parallelism: “The positivist claims that the psychical is given along with the physical; everything spiritual is given along with something material, but not vice versa.”49 Psychical phenomena are always accompanied by something physical, while not everything physical is psychical: The psychical phenomena are never given by themselves; they are always present along with some material, neural phenomena (…) Whenever there are some conscious states of mind, something happens in the body, in the nerves (…). Mental phenomena are conscious reactions of the organism.50

If the states of mind are empirically given, that is, if we assume inner experience is still a valid experience, then empirical psychology cannot study anything that is inconsistent. Krejčí firmly believed in this: “What is not conscious, is not a mental phenomenon; there are no unconscious mental phenomena.”51 Krejčí had to accept such a narrow conception of psychology to keep psychology empirical. But despite this effort and despite this scientificity (which is identifiable with empiricalness), Krejčí’s psychological theory is nothing other than a deductive system. The points of departure stem from the theses of psychophysical parallelism and the conception of mental phenomena as conscious reactions of the organism: “All the questions that had been ever asked by empirical psychology, can be easily answered as consequences of those two theses.”52  František Krejčí, Základy vědeckého systému psychologie. Praha: Česká akademie věd a umění 1929, p. 256. 48  František Krejčí, Psychologie bez duše. Odpověď na stejnojmený spisek profesora Mareše. Praha: Jan Laichter 1912, p. 6. 49  Franitšek Krejčí, Filosofie posledních let před válkou, op. cit., p. 51. 50  Ibid., p. 106. 51  František Krejčí, Základy psychologie, op. cit., p. 21. 52  František Krejčí, Psychologie VI. Praha: Dědictví Komenského 1926, p. 406. 47

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Paradoxically, the main task of psychology is to deduce the consequences of these facts. And Krejčí deliberately proceeds in this way, as evidenced in the sixth volume of Psychology, where he describes his method very explicitly: …everything is contained condensed in the definition of mental phenomena (i.e. of the state of consciousness), which says: mental phenomena are conscious reactions of the organism. This is key to understanding the essence of the human mind and its development (…). This opus proves this, because the theory which it contains is constructed by the deduction of statements from the notion of a ‘conscious reaction’53

If Krejčí’s psychology is deductive, the same can be said about his ethics. His principle, the empirical fact he uses as a starting point, is the capacity to differentiate and be conscious of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Morality is placed in the context of the biological and psychological dimensions of life. After all, this is the only alternative to metaphysically based theories of morality. The only defendable conception of morality is eudaimonistic, since pleasure and happiness are the only purposes of behaviour. But eudaimonism does not necessarily entail egoism: pleasure and happiness can be general, even social. People cannot reach happiness if other people suffer. The source of morality is sympathy. This principle is not metaphysical, because sympathy itself is rooted in the instinct of self-preservation. It pushes people to act benevolently and by doing so they secure their own happiness. The consciousness of this principle is, according to Krejčí, the ultimate stage of moral development.54 Once again, these opinions are the results of deduction. Or at least, Krejčí wished them to be. The instinct of self-preservation is the axiom, according to which all the rest are but deductions. But how can his axiom be justified? Is it really an empirical fact? And are the principles of his psychology really empirical facts? Jiřina Popelová did not think so, instead assuming Krejčí’s moral philosophy to more likely represent an expression of his optimism and confidence in mankind.55 Although Krejčí’s moral philosophy rested on Spencerian principles, it did not lead to Spencerian conclusions. Neither did it match any Comtean conclusions. While Comte stressed the value of society and collective values, Krejčí was an individualist in the Masarykian sense. The instinct of self-preservation was the source of those features (initially, biological; latterly, moral) that could best fit the requirements of life (initially, pure survival; latterly, fortunate life; and finally, humanism).

 Ibid.  František Krejčí, Positivní etika, op. cit., p. 112. 55  Jiřina Popelová, Filosof František Krejčí, op. cit., p. 44. 53 54

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2.4  Positivism Revived Finally, the third period refers to the period of the decline of positivism and of the attempts to renew it in order to compete with both the rise of new idealism and with new trends, such as phenomenology. One of the most important authors of this period was Josef Tvrdý, whose philosophy is sometimes called “revived positivism”. František Šeracký was a champion of Tvrdý’s philosophy, assuming it to be “a new proof showing that positivism is still viable and that is still capable of solving contemporary issues. His new philosophy (as presented in his principal book, Nová filosofie, (The New Philosophy) from 1932) is nothing less than positivism revived, nothing less than positivism which successfully handles the attacks of idealism during the last decade. Positivism thus still belongs firmly in the tradition of Czech philosophy and it is safely enshrined in Czech psychologism and in respect to science.”56 This assertion shows the close relation of Czech positivism to psychology. And as we will see below, Tvrdý himself tried to create a complete conception of the world, being aware that this would not be possible without metaphysics. Czech positivism would be unthinkable not only without psychology, but also without metaphysics. However, Tvrdý’s conception of positivism was very peculiar, to the extent that Krejčí did not assume it to be positivism at all.57 Scientific philosophy, usually assumed as a new, modern and desirable way of philosophising due to its methodic rigorousness, might, on the other hand, have posed a risk to philosophical thought. Philosophy was obliged to deal with issues that were incapable of being solved by the sciences, most notably the issues of values, faith and metaphysics. Metaphysics was, according to Tvrdý, the ultimate task of philosophy.58 In accordance with the previous tradition of Czech positivism, Tvrdý believed that the task of philosophy was to provide a complete conception of the world, which would encompass moral values and human praxis. Of course, science and its results were required to be indispensable and necessary for this purpose. However, science alone would not be able to fulfil it. If philosophy really wished to manage things, the assistance of irrational methods would be needed; methods that were not, and could not, be used by science. Philosophy would enable, or even require, a big dose of imaginativeness from the author. Philosophy was not and was not obliged to be a mere impersonal registration of facts, but a true personal and subjective synthesis.59 Such a synthesis was not envisioned as a summary of knowledge, but a newly

 František Šeracký, “Glosy k Tvrdého Nové filosofii”, in: Česká mysl, 1932, p. 92.  František Krejčí, “O současném českém myšlení filosofickém”, in: Česká mysl, 1933, p. 95. 58  Josef Tvrdý, Moderní proudy ve filosofii. Brno: Ústřední spolek učitelský na Moravě 1926, p. 19. 59  Josef Tvrdý, Nová filosofie. Analysa dnešní filosofické situace. Praha: Volná myšlenka 1932, p. 11. 56 57

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emerging whole. Tvrdý claimed that positivism would free itself from the old prejudices (objectivity, neutrality, etc.) that had been falsely assumed as its essence.60 In Tvrdý’s view, traditional metaphysics was bound to the notion of absolute truth; yet this notion, and the way in which thought worked with it, was unsustainable. Absolute truth was possible only in combination with theological systems. Scientific truth, on the other hand, could only be relative. Absolute truth was connected to something (whatever it might be) that would exist in and of itself, a Kantian thing-in-itself, if you like. In spite of Kant’s philosophy, many authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, whom Tvrdý called “modern Platonists”, tried to attain it. They were convinced, regardless of the differences between their philosophies, that absolute truths existed: to name but a few, Tvrdý cites Windelband’s theory of values, Husserl’s phenomenology and the philosophy of Bergson. Nevertheless, he did not deny metaphysics, since philosophy would not be able to fulfil its function without it: “Philosophy aims, as its main purpose, i.e. at building up to the highest synthesis, at a complete conception of the world and of life. This mission has always been called, metaphysics.”61 The human mind would always ask metaphysical questions and there was no way of forbidding it to do so. In this regard, Tvrdý was in agreement with Masaryk’s statement that positivism could not work as a philosophical police force forever punishing the metaphysicians. If metaphysical questions were not solved the critical way, they would be answered uncritically. The question of the time was not, “Is metaphysics possible?” but rather, “What kind of metaphysics is defensible?” The positivistic fear of metaphysics did it a disservice by letting people fall into the open arms of theosophy, anthroposophy, spiritism and occultism.62 If metaphysics were nothing other than disguised theology, positivism’s denial of it would then be justified, which is not to say that metaphysics was simply a name for ontology or cosmology. On scientific metaphysics, Tvrdý writes: Today, when we witness the swift progress in both natural and human sciences and when these sciences smash through the thin border of science and they daily encounter metaphysical problems (e.g. the theories of Einstein or Planck), philosophy must keep up with it (…). Modern philosophy must take off the eremitic robe of resignation and it must boldly create a new metaphysical world conception, based on modern scientific knowledge.63

This new, scientific metaphysics was intended to be an alternative to its older, theological counterpart. Tvrdý’s metaphysics did not represent an effort at discovering something absolute and transcendent by extraordinary means. He called upon philosophy to come up with a coherent conception of the world and of life (theory and praxis). Science would not be able to provide such a conception. Consequently, philosophy could not contend with a mere systematic organisation of scientific  Ibid., p. 13.  Josef Tvrdý, Úvod do filosofie. Brno: Komenium 1947, p. 17. 62  Josef Tvrdý, Moderní proudy ve filosofii, op. cit., p. 19. 63  Josef Tvrdý, Nová filosofie. Analysa dnešní filosofické situace, op. cit. p. 76–77. 60 61

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knowledge. It had to do something more, which would wholly take on the essence of the synthetic method mentioned above. Without this method, there was a real danger that positivism could turn into dogmatism. Although Tvrdý does not mention Comte frequently, he later acknowledges his attempt to reach positivism’s goal by subjective synthesis.64 According to Tvrdý, metaphysics was impossible without science: “Metaphysics is a set of assumptions and constructions which we build up to be able to represent the world as a whole and our place in it.”65 This definition of metaphysics is fitting and at least three aspects must be noted. First, metaphysics is a human construction, in that it cannot be anything but relative. Second, people represent the world as a whole. Metaphysics serves to create a complete conception of the world, which science only partially constructs. Third, metaphysics equips us with knowledge of moral values. Therefore, the aim of philosophy is not only to provide a conception of the world, but of life as well. It should be noted that, during this period, European philosophy was dominated by logical empirism. Evidently, Czech positivism was aimed at different targets. Logical empirism did not admit any metaphysical problems (nothing more than pseudo-problems in effect); whereas Tvrdý assumed metaphysics to be at the very core of philosophy. The title of Tvrdý’s main book  – Nová filosofie (New Philosophy) – not only expresses the abandonment of the old metaphysics, but also of the old positivism. What then was the difference between the old and the new positivism? Tvrdý compared the development of Czech positivism to the development of French positivism. Although Édouard Le Roy first coined the term, “new positivism,”66 Tvrdý counted Abel Rey, another philosopher, among the new positivist ranks. According to Krejčí, Rey found a plausible compromise between relativistic pragmatism (which accepts any viable superstition) and dogmatic positivism (which refuses anything that is non-scientific). Tvrdý described Krejčí’s philosophy as the “old, dogmatic, orthodox positivism.”67 Krejčí’s psychology, the cornerstone of his positivism, was outdated even in the 1900s, but Tvrdý did not evaluate it anachronically. He praised it as progressive, comparing it to the Herbartian psychology of the 1880s and 1890s, even though his views differed with the prevailing consensus of the 1930s. The new positivism placed more emphasis on subjectivity. In that context, it is interesting that, in referring to Rey as a representative of the charge, he says: “The philosophy which is today called neopositivism in France, was proclaimed here a

 Josef Tvrdý, Moderní proudy ve filosofii, op. cit., p. 8.  Ibid., p. 19. 66  Édouard Le Roy, “Un positivisme nouveau”, in: Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1901, p. 140. 67  Ibid., p. 10. 64 65

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long time ago by Masaryk. The only difference was that Masaryk did not call it neopositivism but realism.”68 In her study, Jiřina Popelová did not infer Tvrdý’s positivism to be one that had been revived, but as its essential remodelling.69

2.5  Conclusion The question why, in its third period, Czech positivists did not absorb the new impulses emanating from the Vienna Circle, can now be answered. In my opinion, the answer lies in the fact that the most influential exponents of Czech positivism were not natural scientists: they expected that philosophy would and should provide a conception of the world, inclusive of moral certainty. Moreover, Czech positivists were not as hostile to metaphysics. Metaphysical spheres had always existed within positivism.70 Czech positivists were well aware of this and admitted so explicitly. Krejčí, the most positivist of positivists, admitted that there was “an unknowable transcendence”71 or “an unknowable necessity”72 that determined everything. Drtina assumed metaphysics to be at the core of philosophy.73 Tvrdý did not even think to ask if metaphysics was possible or acceptable; in fact, he directly asked which kind of metaphysics was plausible. In his opinion, it was impossible to eliminate metaphysics: that was why it was better to prefer scientific over theological metaphysics, since metaphysics was not possible without science.74 Logical empiricism simply could not find fertile ground, considering Czech positivists had no use for it. In addition, they still harboured some sort of “idealistic nostalgia”. Czech philosophers only reported on logical positivism, but they neither followed nor developed it (in contrast to Polish philosophy, for example). Philosophers who occupied themselves with logic or the philosophy of science assumed the philosophy of the Vienna Circle to be an extreme position. Materna speaks of the “Scylla of neo-positivistic nominalism”, with Husserlian phenomenology in the role of “the Charybdis”.75 Tardy, who also reviewed Carnap’s books shortly after their publication, called physicalism “the most extreme stage of

 Ibid.  Jiřina Popelová, Studie o současné české filosofii, op. cit., p. 22. 70  Josef L. Fischer, “Krejčí a Comte”, in: Jaroslav Šimsa, Josef Navrátil (eds.), Sborník ku poctě Františka Krejčího. Praha: Čin 1929, p. 41. 71  František Krejčí, Filosofie posledních let před válkou, op. cit., p. 61. 72  František Krejčí, Positivní etika, op. cit., p. 69. 73  František Drtina, Úvod do filosofie, sv I., Praha: Jan Laichter 1929, p. 51. 74  Josef Tvrdý, Nová filosofie. Analysa dnešní filosofické situace, op. cit., p. 76. 75  Miloš Materna, “K dynamické logice”, in: Česká mysl 1936, p. 85. 68 69

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n­ eo-­positivism.”76 Tvrdý assumed logical positivism to be a new version of medieval nominalism.77 Dratvová argued that the notion of structure, as used by Carnap, was a metaphysical notion, and that science and metaphysics were inseparable.78 Although logical positivism, or at least its basic features, was known among Czech philosophers, they assumed it to be one of the modern trends in philosophy, incapable of satisfying their expectations. Instead of welcoming the philosophy of the Vienna Circle to Czech positivism, they shunned it. Acknowledgement This work was supported within the project of the Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme, Research Centre for Theory and History of Science, registration No. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0138, co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic.

 Vladimír Tardy, “Logistika na filosofickém kongresu”, in: Česká mysl 1934, p. 167.  Josef Tvrdý, “Indukce a její význam”, in: Česká mysl 1947, p. 71. 78  Albína Dratvová, Filosofie a přírodovědecké poznání. Praha: Česká grafická unie 1946, p. 299. 76 77

Chapter 3

Philipp Frank’s Civic and Intellectual Life in Prague: Investments in Loyalty Veronika Hofer

Recent studies in the history of philosophy of science have singled out key elements in the work of Philipp Frank to find him a more nuanced place in the gallery of Logical Empiricists. It seems that the controversies concerning the place of non-­ cognitive factors in theory choice which mark the epistemological positions of Frank and Neurath are found to be of special relevance. Thus, Frank’s interpretation of Mach’s legacy in philosophy of science is treated with particular elaborateness, and it is interpreted in close connection to his constant interest in the philosophical, social, and political impact of scientific principles through history and into current practice, which also reflects his impetus as an academic teacher and as a teacher addressing the wider public. The goal I want to accomplish in this paper is to find a concept which helps us interpret his concrete, situated life with all its contextual intricacies, and which allowed his intellectual transition from Vienna to Prague to Boston, so that we have to read Frank’s life and work as a dense web of related issues, for which his practice of multiple publications of his papers gives ample opportunity. I want to offer a concept which was introduced in historical social studies of identity formations, and which I regard as a valuable approach, which will allow us to see the aspects of Frank’s civil and intellectual personas in the three distinct political situations. This is the concept of loyalty, which I will introduce in this paper.

V. Hofer (*) Department of History, Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_3

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3.1  E  rnst Mach as an Intellectual Interlocutor for Philosophical Problems in Science Born in Vienna, Philipp Frank (1884–1966) studied theoretical physics at the Institute of Physics, which was dominated by Boltzmann’s concept that the basis of physics is statistical. Frank told Thomas Kuhn, who interviewed him in 1962, that this Boltzmannian concept convinced students of physics to delve into philosophy of science. “All the physicists in Vienna were interested in the philosophy of science. Hence, if there was anything connected with philosophy of science (such as the status of statistical laws) it would be widely discussed.”1 Frank was educated in an intellectual atmosphere where “All were more or less followers of Ernst Mach in the philosophical sense.”2 The wide ranging impact of the changes to the most fundamental concepts in physics, and its links to philosophy, began to structure his work, building a consistent basis for a philosophy which allowed him to interpret core epistemic concepts of physical inquiry according to the new situation created by the statistical basis of physics.3 There was always this interesting question: What was the relation between Mach and Boltzmann? Also, as strange as it might seem, Vienna physicists were followers of both Mach and Boltzmann…….Of course I was very interested in the whole problem, but it never occurred to me that, by following Mach’s theories, one shouldn’t also pursue the theories of Boltzmann4

This was the center of Frank’s scientific and liberal-leftist political interests as a student and docent in Vienna, which he shared with the “First Vienna Circle”. This included Hans Hahn (professor of mathematics at the Institute of Physics) and Otto Neurath, who was interested in a new epistemology for sociology, economics, politics, and history. The outcome, in terms of the epistemological tactics for overcoming the crisis in mechanics, was to combine Mach’s relativity principle with French’s conventionalist epistemology of Pierre Duhem and Henri Poincaré. But Ernst Mach offered unique opportunities, since he was still alive and approachable in Vienna, even while the interpretation of his work was in an ongoing flux, motivated by rapid developments in physics and discussions of whether and how valid a declared breakthrough really was. Frank took Mach’s concept of definitions which are valid only regarding a reference system together with Mach’s cleansing agenda as a profound and sound principle of pragmatism, capable of relating the value systems of modern science with politics and all other domains of modern life.

1  John T.  Blackmore, Ernst Mach’s Vienna 1895–1930: Or Phenomenalism as Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Springer 2001, p. 62. 2  Ibid, p. 64. 3  Michael Stöltzner has called this synthesis “Vienna Indeterminism”, cf. “Vienna Indeterminism: Mach, Boltzmann, Exner“, in: Synthese 119, 1999, pp. 85–111. 4  Blackmore, Ernst Mach’s Vienna 1895–1930: Or Phenomenalism as Philosophy of Science, op. cit. p. 63.

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3.1.1  T  he Cleansing Method: Mach’s Skeptical Legacy of Progress in the History of Science Neurath and Frank took some important lessons from Mach. Mach served as a role model for Neurath and Frank for delving into the complexities of histories and allowed them to open their methods to account for the social and cultural context of theory formations. Thus, they aimed at explaining the prevailing discourse by taking the opposing claims as relevant expressions of a situated complex of knowledge claims. Mach, as the doyen of nineteenth century scientist-historians, also offered a special method to deal with metaphysical claims. His positivism not only sought shelter from the ceaseless flux of science in modest but stable facts, but he figured as the role model for inquiries into the history of scientific rationality with his “historisch-­ kritische Darstellung”. Denouncing simple tales of progress, he paved the way for a history of science as conceptual cleansing.5 His analysis was prompted by the urgency he felt to expose the misguided research programs of the present in light of the errors of the past. His method of critical analysis rested on the conviction that, haunted by change, it is not enough to reject “primordial causes” and a priori categories of reason, but also to reject unprovable ontologies and premature theory-­ building by invoking the historical fragility of the unobservable. He turned to historical analysis by means of detailed, in-depth case studies conducted upon old and new scientific theories. These case studies analyzed scientific concepts as complex historical facts. Mach exposed those parts which helped him reconstruct the transformations of scientific theories. The Logical Empiricists subscribed to this method in singling out those parts of the historical and current activity of scientific theorizing which ensure a strict connection back to the language of experience. But Frank distinguished himself from Carnap’s formalistic setting of the task of conceptual cleansing with his idea about the historical nature of metaphysical claims in scientific theories. He thought of them as leftovers of conservative methodological claims which do harm by overstepping their boundaries only when expressed as strict demands. But, expressed as values, Frank (counter to Carnap) did not think of them as dangerous. The key locus of Frank’s rejection of metaphysics is not that metaphysical claims are pseudoclaims that cannot be reconstructed in scientific language but that they form misguided, deeply conservative methodological demands on the activity of scientific theorizing itself. This is not to say that such principles cannot in fact serve to constrain scientific theories but that they need not – and when made in the form of demands, rather than expressed in the form of values, they overstep their bounds.6

 See Lorraine Daston, “The Historicity of Science”, in: Glenn W.  Most (ed.), HistoricizationHistorisierung., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck – Ruprecht 2001, p. 201. 6  Alan Richardson, “Occasions for an Empirical History of Philosophy of Science: American Philosophers of Science at Work in the 1950s and 1969s”, in: HOPOS 2, 2012, p. 12. 5

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3.1.2  M  ach’s Pragmatist Legacy: The Relativity Principle’s Link with Values In the case of Frank, this non-formalistic reading of Mach’s legacy was very much informed by the deep impact which Abel Ray’s analysis of the historical life of physical concepts in crisis situations had upon him.7 According to Mathias Neuber, Frank admitted that in the 1920s (while living in Prague) he understood Ray’s philosophy to a greater extent than in 1910, when he was one of only a few to write a positive review of Ray’s published thesis, “Theory of physics around the modern physicists”. As Matthias Neuber explicitly revealed – and this is relevant in the context of this paper – there are central elements for Ray’s ever increasing impact on Frank’s epistemological and pragmatist interpretation of the conception of the scientific world that were not shared by the rest of the group of intellectuals making up the Logical Empiricists. First, Ray followed Mach in stating that thinking in terms of metaphysical substances should be substituted by an account of relationist relativism, since that is the only thing there is for us to determine. But physics, operating with testable hypotheses rather than eternal laws and absolute entities, must not give up on objectivity, since it is still the best candidate for an intersubjective, evaluative, binding rational procedure, which serves well in scientific practice. Promoting the ideal of “conjectural physics”, Ray thought it can operate as a stronghold against any dogmatic-­ metaphysics as well as against a generalized skepticism, averse to the abstract mathematical operations in modern physics as counter-intuitive to common sense. Second, both Ray and Frank adhere to this ideal of objectivity as the heritage of the Enlightenment, which should also unfold in matters of the social-political world. For Ray, as well as for Frank and his fellow comrades in the camp of the Logical Empiricists, this pragmatist enlightenment program was the best fit to substantiate democracy. Thus, Third, Elisabeth Nemeth adds the importance of thinking and acting regarding a frame of reference to Neuber’s analysis of Ray’s impact on Frank, which is in fact what Frank and Neurath regarded as Mach’s legacy. There is an intrinsic relation between Frank’s account of science and how he conceived its embeddedness in society as a whole. The concept of objectivity plays a crucial role in this setting......Frank’s main point was that the procedures which “relativize” the truth of a statement (in demonstrating that its truth depends on a certain frame of reference) do not lead to subjectivism and arbitrariness. On the contrary: they constitute scientific objectivity.8

Nemeth clarifies her account of the importance of the concept of objectivity with this quotation from Frank’s Relativity – A Richer Truth:”... the so-called ‘relativism’ is a method which has been instrumental in the progress of human knowledge … 7  See Matthias Neuber, “Philosophie der modernen Physik-Philipp Frank und Abel Rey“, in: Grazer Philosophische Studien 80, 2010, pp. 131–149. 8  Michael Heidelberger and Friedrich Stadler (eds.), Philosophy of Science and Politics. Wien, New York: Springer 2003.

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where the real battle for the progress of knowledge has been fought, this battle has proceeded under the very guidance of the doctrine of the ‘relativity of truth’.”9 And Nemeth, analyzing Frank’s book Relativity – A Richer Truth, makes another very important point as she shows in which ways Frank views values and their relation between scientific theories and science as an activity are important to democracy. Nemeth points to the significance of engaging in critique within Frank’s philosophy and educational program. Confronted in post-war America with accusations that a disbelief in absolute values and an agnostic attitude science are responsible for the breakdown of social and political morale, Frank answered with an important qualification. It is true that science does and must question all absolute knowledge claims. This methodical attitude of critical inquiring weakens the belief in absolute values. But this critical attitude towards absolute values does not mean disbelief in the objectivity of values.10 In important matters, Frank dissociated himself from Carnap’s formalistic setting of the task of conceptual cleansing. It was not only Frank’s idea about the historical nature of metaphysical claims in scientific theories that estranged Frank from Carnap, but also the role of values in science which led to a sort of parting the ways between Frank and Carnap. Frank regarded permanent and absolute constraints on what is scientifically acceptable untenable as well as sociologically and psychologically unrealistic, because in situations of theory choice scientists appeal to values. Values as methodological demands are misleading, but given the underdetermination problem, values have their place in serving as explanatory principles in situations of theory choice.11

3.2  Philipp Frank in Prague: Mach’s Legacy Put to Test These elements in Frank’s philosophy of science seem to be established as a tested, consistent basis in his life – and what I want to show here is that it was tested foremost in his formative years as “homo academicus” in Prague. Metaphysical claims, formulated as hieratic demands and accompanied by insinuations that, if not followed it prompts anarchy and an invitation to value-free life, he encountered these forms of metaphysical claims in his fight with Christian von Ehrenfels. It seems that he learned through his experience with von Ehrenfels what it means for an academic field to be tainted with all the oddities and reactionary power a philosopher could claim.

9  Elisabeth Nemeth, “Philosophy of Science and Democracy. Some Reflections on Philipp Frank’s Relativity  – A Richer Truth”, in: Heidelberger and Stadler (eds.): Philosophy of Science and Politics, op. cit., p. 20. 10  Ibid, p.21. 11  See Richardson, “Occasions for an Empirical History of Philosophy of Science: American Philosophers of Science at Work in the 1950s and 1960s”, op. cit., p. 12.

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3.2.1  T  he Fight for Mach’s Heritage in 1914 – The Beginning of Frank’s Academic Profile in Prague Shortly after assuming his full professorship as one of the two chairs in physics (the other held by the Prague native, Anton Lampa) at the German University in Prague in 1912, Frank became involved in the search for a replacement for a chair in philosophy after Anton Marty (a prime scholar of the School of Brentano) retired in 1913. The search was renewed in the spring of 1914, after the first call, which proposed Franz Hillebrandt (Brentano School), was not successful due to financial reasons. The highly conflictive consultations in the Collegium of Professors in the wake of the procedure were hard fought between the Brentano School and scholars of the Mach School of Positivism, Pragmatism, and Empirio-Criticism. The founder of Gestalt psychology, Baron Christian von Ehrenfels, led the Brentanists’ call for a scholar who, like himself and the young associate professor Oskar Kraus, would represent “critical realism”. Under von Ehrenfels guidance, most of the representatives of the chairs in humanities explicitly excluded Machian scholars from this call. They wanted someone in the tradition of Mach’s experimental psychology (which they declared as Mach’s sound and useful heritage), but wanted to restrict Mach’s methods to Gestalt theory, which was von Ehrenfels field of research and intellectual domain. In the first meeting of the commission in 1914, the proposal of von Ehrenfels’ group won, but Lampa and Frank formulated a minority votum of 18 pagescandidates, ignoring the others in his critical treatment of the candidates. In his submission on July 6, 1914 to the Kaiserlich-Königlich Minister of Education Max Ritter von Hussarek, he opposed their intention to claim the vacant chair of philosophy for their camp using all his academic esteem. He did not shy away from denunciation of his opponents on all registers. To give a short summary of his position, von Ehrenfels structured his arguments mainly on these issues: 1. Positivism should be banned due to its unconstrained subjectivism and its sloppiness in the logical construction for the argument of psycho-parallelism. I will call this the logical sloppiness due to unconstrained subjectivism argument. 2. This sloppiness is apparent to von Ehrenfels based on Petzoldt’s rejection of the well-tried principle of causality, which von Ehrenfels held dear and Petzoldt dumped, which is obvious in Petzoldt’s phrasing that it is “fetishist notions of cause, effect, necessity”, and in his argumentation in favor of a strict psychological indeterminism, which von Ehrenfels called Petzoldt’s “paralogistical Leitmotiv”. Let me call this Ehrenfels’ causality argument, and we can see its relatedness to the unconstrained subjectivism argument. 3. Positivism fails to provide a point of view to comprehend and interpret the world due to its opposition to metaphysics. This is the anti-metaphysics failure argument. 4. Positivism would harm the academic practice of examining students, which is normally done cooperatively by the professors of philosophy, but is jeopardized

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by this possibly insurmountable gap in the interpretation of the foundations of rationality and science. The appointment of either Petzoldt or Kleinpeter as a professor of philosophy would not only disturb the teaching and examination process, but it would undermine the dignity of the education at the German University in Prague, since its value system would be eroded entirely by Mach’s philosophy of knowledge. This is the education of values in science-argument. In the critique which he formulated for Kleinpeter’s “principle of relativity of knowledge”, von Ehrenfels even went a step further in his polemics, which pitched to an aggressively high tone. Von Ehrenfels formulated this argumentation thusly: Relativity of knowledge according to Kleinpeter is nothing else but to say that the truth of a sentence is grounded in the relation of its content to the judging individual;… just this relativity, which mounts to the implication, that for each individual should be true what the individual beliefs as to be true… This statement of the relativity of knowledge in this sense is in fact equivalent to entirely deny truth and knowledge… Love of truth and fidelity are the most necessary preconditions of all conscientiousness and therefor of all social confidence and all state-run order. The love of truth, the commitment to truth, to proof of truth is only possible for one who beliefs in truth… Thus the close correlation of the notion of existence and of truth is one of the most certain statements of all theory of knowledge… This doctrine [Positivism, V.H.] is a great intellectual nuisance with – not willfully – but in fact existing destructive tendencies for the public moral and for the state.12

Here von Ehrenfels stressed what I will call the relativity argument, and in connection to this argument he brought forward the education of values in science argument, which was linked (by all combatants) in the dispute to the values of science for the state argument.

3.2.2  Lampa’s and Frank’s “Antikritik” On the second page of their answer to von Ehrenfels’ critique of Petzoldt’s and Kleinpeter’s publications (what they called “Antikritik”), they stated (and this passage is what is signified as Frank’s) that von Ehrenfels misapprehends in Petzoldt’s concept of causality the crucial point, that the real difference is between Petzoldt’s and that ‘law of causality which was determined already a long time ago” (ironically citing von Ehrenfels’ report). For Petzoldt the term ‘necessity’ figures as the last remains of anthropomorphism in the law of causality, and its substitution with the terminology of unequivocally determination is of essential importance for his considerations. E. [von Ehrenfels, V.H.] misconceives of the entire situation as he is not able to distance himself from his own school.... But for this time, we do not like to delve into this issue more than E. himself.13

12 13

 Peter Goller, “Prager Memorandum für die positivistische Philosophie”, in: Topos, 1995, p. 154.  Ibid., pp. 163, 164.

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This is what I would call Frank’s “petrified causality” argument, to which he made ample contributions in his entire lifework, although not in this exact verbiage.14 Frank and Lampa’s response to von Ehrenfels’ submission to the ministerium in Vienna was sharp and comprehensive. They organized a letter of recommendation for Petzoldt from Albert Einstein, who let the ministerium know that Petzoldt’s importance stems from his shrewd treatment and progressive development of Mach’s work on problems in the theory of knowledge. Einstein figured as one of the most distinguished scholars of the Austrian empire. Einstein, in his politeness and willingness to help, wrote, “His work on the genesis and formation of the notion of substance as well as his treatise of the principle of relativity from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge must be considered as one of the finest and most sharp-­ sighted contributions of our days.”15 With this letter from Einstein, Mach was established as, not only the excellent experimentalist which the Brentanist reading of Mach’s work would like to have it, but also as the noted (historical) epistemologist, and for some even the philosopher of knowledge. It might well be that this letter helped to secure symbolically, thus grosso modo, the relevance of Mach’s legacy as the philosopher of science in Prague, at least for the moment. Also, in this background of success in securing Mach’s legacy in Prague, Frank would work with sincerity on re-interpretations of Mach, published as an example of his lifelong loyalty to Mach’s heritage (obituary 1917 and speech at the Machfeier 1938).

3.2.3  Tactics and Arguments Lampa and Frank’s tactics were to show in a subtle way disgust for von Ehrenfels’ unusual polemic against Mach and to expose the denunciation of Mach’s school of thought by revealing that von Ehrenfels’ maneuvers were blatantly overstepping the traditional rules of academic behavior. And they argued for this point politely, only becoming polemical in relation to von Ehrenfels’ insinuation of the dangers implicit in Mach’s positivism, that it would erode the social and moral values of the university. Against von Ehrenfels’ strategy of dividing Mach-the-experimentalist and Mach-the-epistemologist and/or philosopher of knowledge, they came to the following conclusion: All that von Ehrenfels delivered in his report to the ministerium is proof to his incapacity to understand even the basics of the direction in theory of knowledge to which Petzoldt and Kleinpeter approved of. His conclusions he drove of the moral nature of this theory of knowledge do not rest on any verifiable basis. In reality E. (von Ehrenfels, V.H.) shows nothing but the pretension such as: Those who do not subscribe to my definition of existence, my definition of truth, those are rebels and anarchists. The philosophers of k­ nowledge

 Thomas Uebel, “Beyond the Formalist Criterion of Cognitive Significance: Philipp Frank’s later Antimetaphysics”, in: HOPOS 1, 2011, pp. 53, 54. 15  Goller, “Prager Memorandum für die positivistische Philosophie”, op. cit., p. 155. 14

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of the direction which E. condemns could say with the same right, following E’s rhetoric: Who assert to an absolute existence claim something which he cannot prove…..With consequence the products of his education are people who are literally quixotic; dreamers, which follow their phantasmagories, unfit to do the right thing and unable to see the consequences of their own thoughts and deeds; people, which are socially unfit despite their highflying ethical principles, which they hold so deer. This doctrine is called philosophical Realism without good reason; it should be properly called Illusionism. This doctrine is, unaware of their representatives, dangerous to the state.”16 And the “Antikritik” ends by defending the attempt to dispense with metaphysics. They continue in this because it is obvious that von Ehrenfels calls all those who try to do without metaphysics revolutionaries, because he abhorred looking without his rose-colored glasses. “This is psychologically understandable, but unsubstantiated, because there is no proof for the morally and socially destructive tendencies of their theory of knowledge, which strive to master the problems of knowledge without metaphysical hypothesis.17

3.3  S  ituated Knowledge Claims: Values in Science Argument as Frank’s Motivational Resource In the cited passage concerning the causality argument and the relativity argument we see how Frank underscored Petzoldt’s arguments for a new meaning of causality in terms of a conventionalist interpretation. But in his nagging in the direction of Mach’s historical-anthropological-evolutionist understanding of causality there is also the remains of old spiritual needs, which lost their functions in a different context of knowledge systems. We also see how the relativity principle of Mach really worked in Frank’s local context in Prague. Saying that any sentence gets its operational meaning only relative to a frame of reference worked in the intellectual topology of Prague like a morally reliable and intellectually honest truth-making argument. In the historical material on the disputes and polemics in the fight over Mach’s heritage in Prague, we get a glimpse of the meanings of the law of causality and what bundle of values were associated with it on both sides of the battle. If Frank’s first interest in working on the law of causality stemmed from his first papers on causality in Vienna, encouraged by a letter from Einstein sent to him as a young docent, this material shows how the matter of conflicting worldviews felt in real time in his context in Prague. It was not only a matter of intellectual disputes for physicists who were interested in the philosophy of science in the wake of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Moreover, it shows that the motives of his occupation with the problem of causality were not restricted to disputes internal to physics, but of central concern in his local academic context, with quite far reaching consequences. We can probably state, supported by the historical material, that Franks’ motivation to write his book, The Law of Causality and its Limits (published in 1932), was intensified and

16 17

 Ibid., p. 187.  Ibid., p. 189.

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endowed with a very concrete contextual meaning by his experiences in Prague. On these grounds, I would like to propose the reading of Frank’s book as a situated knowledge claim which expressed his handling of his social-political, as well as his intellectual situation in Prague. We can get to a more comprehensive understanding of why he took causality as the principal concept: (a) because it allowed him to treat relationalist antimetaphysics, indeterminist anti-substantialism, and enlightenment critical inquiries as liberal values, which are intrinsically linked with scientific claims and practice; (b) because there are many other implications in scientific claims and practice which are intimately linked to the pragmatist considerations of looking critically at the practiced culture of educating values at the university, which had become pertinent in academic circles; (c) Frank was exceedingly motivated, given this situation in the Prague context, in his critical inquiries into all sorts of values intrinsically woven in the conceptualizations of causality; (d) and this motivation was not only the background for him to provide a balanced scientific mission in the post-Habsburgian, democratic society of interwar Czechoslovakia, but also the same motivation, in a different context, nourished his work in the US. Thus, recent historical studies in the US picture Frank in his time in the Boston area as an organizer and ambassador for a more comprehensive study of science in society. In this way, Frank figures as a forerunner for this new brand of science and philosophy studies, like History of Philosophy of Science and “Integrated History and Philosophy of Science”, since he can be seen as a scientist and philosopher of sciences whose work considers new norms for how modern philosophy of science should proceed in engaging with topics that are not only epistemologically relevant in a formalistic way, but which encompass social concern. Most of the later studies deal with Frank’s impact in the community of American philosophy of science and mark a central place for him. “He was a key figure within the scientific community who kept alive the larger interests of philosophy of science and whose institution-building work continues to have consequences for the organization of the field right up to today.”18

3.4  Lectures and Academic Activities: The Controversy Between the “Critical Realists” and “Logical Empiricists” Reflected in the List of Seminars and Lectures In describing what Frank actually did in his academic career in Prague, his service in the academic year 1930/31 as dean of the faculty of natural sciences is worth mentioning (The faculty was founded in 1921 and served as Frank’s home base for his academic life in Prague). The reason why Frank served this year may be that, in   Richardson, “Occasions for an Empirical History of Philosophy of Science: American Philosophers of Science at Work in the 1950s and 1960s”, op. cit., p. 13.

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this position, he could secure a call for Carnap for the position in philosophy of sciences, who came to Prague to teach in the Summer Semester of 1932. Carnap held his lectures mainly in the evening hours in the mathematical seminar, which was adjacent to the rooms Philipp Frank occupied as chair of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Carnap’s lectures on “Introduction to Philosophy of Science”, open for all students of all faculties, and his lecture “Philosophical Foundations of Mathematical and Physical Geometry” stood in stark contrast to what Christian von Ehrenfels had lectured on in the Winter Semester of 1931/32. We do not know how many students Ehrenfels attracted to his lectures on “Pacifism and Nationalism from the Eugenics Point of View” and “Political Trends of Present Age and Worldview”. But we know that there were protests held by the German speaking students as a reaction to von Ehrenfels’ public lectures on his version of “Social Biology”, pleading with the young male students to halt the promiscuous sexual habits, which would bring the decline of birthrate for intelligent people, in order to oppose the proliferation of the “Yellow race”. It is remarkable to see how the fights between the two professors of philosophy, von Ehrenfels and Oskar Kraus, were reflected in the lectures they gave at the university. Von Ehrenfels, from 1914 onwards, gave lectures in “Social Biology”, “General Theory of Values”, “Cosmic Physionomy”, “Kant and his Impact “, “The Problem of the Free Will”, “The Art of Richard Wagner”, “General Theory of Gestalt”, “Metaphysical Questions”, “Epistemology”, “Theory of Chance”, “On Hans Driesch’s Philosophy of the Organic World”, “General Methodology and Systematics of Science”, “The Decline of the Occident”, “The Law of the Prime Number”, “Epistemology of the Exact Sciences”, “Moral and Politics”, and, from the 1930s onwards, “The Essence of Probability”, “Are There Absolute Values?”, and “Social Erotic” and a one hour lecture titled “Sexual Commitments”. Oskar Kraus held lectures in “History of Philosophy”, “Metaphysical Problems”, from 1915 onwards “Relativity Theories in Theoretical and Practical Philosophy”, “Logics and Epistemology”, “Ethics of Individuals and of Nations”, “Franz Brentanos Teachings of ‘God and Immortality’”, and, from 1920 onwards, “Epistemological Critique of Einstein’s Relativity Theory”, “Space, Time, Causality with Respect to Relativity Theory”, “Affecting Philosophical Questions of Today”, “Ontology and Metaphysics”, “Phenomenological Psychology” and more and more “Logic and Philosophy of Language”. Philipp Frank’s lectures began with “Molecular Physics”, “Electrical, Light- and Heat-Radiation”, and in 1914 he began to lecture on “The Principle of Relativity, It’s Foundations and Applications”, “Atomism”, “Theoretical Mechanics with Special Reference to the Theory of Relative Motion”, and he began to lecture in 1915 on “Hydromechanics and Aoeromechanics” and “Kinetic and Thermodynamic Theory of Heat”, together with “Advanced Mechanics”, “Calculus of Probability”, “Theory of the Aeroplanes”, “Theory of Gravitation”, and in 1917 he lectured on “Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Theory”, “Partial Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics”. It seems that with the end of WWI, and since Lampa moved from Prague to Vienna, Frank started with new themata in his lectures. In the Summer Semester of

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1918 he lectured on “Introduction in the Theory of Relativity”, “Huyhens and Newton”, “Theory of Compression of Light”, “Discussions of New Papers on Quantum Theory”, “Discussions of New Papers on Radiology”, “Thermodynamics”, and “General Relativity Theory”. After his habilitation, Reinhold Fürth held his first lectures in the Winter Semester of 1919/20 on “Introduction in Theoretical Physics” and “Frequency Phenomena in Physics”, in 1922 he held with Frank “Theory of Flight of Machines”, and in 1923 taught “The Partial Differential Equations in Mathematical Physics”. Since the Summer Semester of 1923, the three colleagues Frank, Reinhold Fürth and Rausch-Traubenberg held together a “physical colloquium”.19 In the summer-semester of 1924 Frank gave his first lecture in “Introduction in Theory and History of the Exact Sciences”, which was promptly countered by von Ehrenfels in the next semester with his two lectures “Epistemology of the Exact Sciences” and “A New Evidence for Vitalism”.

3.5  Frank’s Personal Commitments to His Czech Colleagues This list of lectures offered by the faculty of science provides a good perspective on the differences in the approach to the philosophy of science between the Department of Philosophy, run by the Brentanists, and the counter activities of the faculty of natural sciences in the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Experimental Physics and Applied Mathematics, which assembled Frank, Fürth, and Rausch-Traubenberg. But there is another interesting side of Frank’s academic networking in Prague, which includes Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942). Rádl, as the chief organizer, had Carnap and Frank chosen to help organize the 8th International Congress of Philosophy in 1934 in Prague. Rádl was a biologist and philosopher with a Czech background, who was bilingual, speaking German and Czech fluently, but also able to speak some French and English. His academic influence was based on his scientific reputation, and his status as a public intellectual in Czechoslovakia, and his official power was great enough for him to found the “Department of Methodology and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences” in 1921, where Albína Dratvová found a home during her short academic career. This Czech Department of Philosophy was a special place for open discussions about the new physics and its philosophical consequences. Although Rádl appreciated Mach’s experimental method and explicitly worked on physiological problems in biology according these methods, as a philosopher of biology he defended Driesch’s metaphysical Holisms. And Albína Dratvová defended causality as a heuristic principle in the sciences. Her opinion on the relationship between science and philosophy was that the special sciences could never replace “speculative” philosophy, contrary to the opinion of neo-positivism.

  Michael Stöltzner, “Philipp Frank and the German Physical Society“, in: W.  DePauliSchimanovich, E. Köhler and F.  Stadler (Eds.), The Foundational Debate. Complexity and Constructivity in Mathematics and Physics. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1995, pp. 293–302.

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So, it seems that Rádl and Frank shared the characteristics as bridge-builders between opposing philosophies, or ethnicities, or political parties. This fits with what Gerald Holton emphasized: Philipp Frank’s agenda was primarily to work and publish as a missionary, as a scientist, philosopher, and humanist. This combination also comes to the fore when Ernest Nagel, Frank’s friend in the US, said about him, “The philosophy of science in the hands of Frank is a profoundly liberating discipline”. But if there is any proof of Frank’s feelings of loyalty to some of his colleagues at both faculties of sciences at the German and the Czech Charles Universities, the letters he sent from his voyage from Prague to the USA via Cambridge can be regarded as an authentic document of it.

3.6  The Letters With a letter to his friend Albína Dratvová, Frank commented on his mixed feelings about Chamberlain’s appeasement politics with Hitler. Written 1  month after the end of the state of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, when the Entente allowed Hitler the annexation of the Sudentenland in Western Czechoslovakian and with that the destruction of the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia, we witness the shock Philipp Frank and his wife Hania experienced. Frank had the right intuition that this was, of course, the end of the democracy in the country, where he had held his citizenship since 1930. We get a good impression of how Philipp Frank felt for the Czechoslovakian Republic and for his life there in Prague, when he rightly feared he had lost it. In this letter, and the text on loyalty by Rádl, with whom he held multiple ties during his Prague period, the emotions which Frank expressed to his friend Albína Dratvová, an associate professor in Rádl’s Department of Methodology and Philosophy of Natural Sciences, are understandable. On his trip to the US at the end of 1938, when learning of the infamous Munich treaty, he feared that it might not be possible for him and his wife to return to Prague anytime soon. These thoughts were realistic and testified to his awareness and authentic feelings of loss. Dear Colleague, since my last letter so many things have changed. When we were in England the changes came suddenly and for us unexpected. We [Philipp Frank and his wife, Hania – V.H.] departed from England end of September to Amerika. The atmosphere among the people was totally down who previously did not want to hear anything of an intervention at the continent. Then everyone said: we should not leave our friends alone, because then we in return will be left alone in a moment of danger. And the shock came as we were on the ship. The news of the Munich conference was broadcasted: It was a French ship. At first, the Flanders and the English people did not understand the news. They were rather happy that the war has been avoided. But there were also Czech people on the ship and they immediately knew what it was about, and all have been very unhappy. When I will be in Prague again I will tell you about my odd impressions from these days. For us, for my wife and me there arose personally a complicated situation in financial and moral matters. Concerning the first I will have to go with the money from my lectures only, because under the new

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V. Hofer circumstances I cannot get any money from my own bank-account transferred here as we planned. Your kind afford in this respect has no effect now. I left my wife in New York and I am travelling alone to California and back. I must give talks on 12 Universities. But the whole travelling got a sad smack for me and it is hard to concentrate to the issue. When I am back in Prague in December or beginning of January I will find a totally changed situation. Our university, where I was active for 25 years will hardly exist and I really do not know with what I will go further in my life. Here one gets only very little information about details and I would be very thankful if you could write something about the changes in the Universities. Supposedly there will be changes in the ministry also. Would I not have such sad thoughts about our country and about our own future the trip could be very nice and interesting. I am now in Chicago. Here one feels strongly sympathetic for our country and our former President is awaited with great sympathies. Dear Colleague, in times like this one must be a true philosopher and try to delve into abstract matters. At least we know now for certain: the ‘practical’ people, which believe to understand something did not understand at all. With cordially greetings Yours Philipp Frank.20

Frank’s statements on the changes at the university as the institution in which he invested his loyalty, as well as his moaning of “our country” from which he held citizenship only since 1930, attest to the complexity of his feelings for “his country”, Czechoslovakia. His rather cryptic remarks on the best reaction with which one should answer this situation is interesting, because Frank compares the camp of “true philosophers” to “practical” people, which the letter states were so deluded in their hopefulness. This seems to be a note to Dratvová pointing to debates they had in Prague, between those who wanted to delve into more abstract matters and opposing those “practical” people who had a comprehensive view of what philosophy of sciences should be. This is not only a comment on his self-image of belonging to the pragmatic wing in the group of Logical Empiricism, with Otto Neurath on his side in opposing Carnap, his colleague in Prague until 1936. It could also be a mild, ironic remark on the differences in terms of the investment of trust in the Czechoslovakian democracy and its institutions between Carnap, the true philosopher and himself, the pragmatist, who very much invested trust, and thus leading to the difference in expressions of loyalty. It is obvious that Albína Dratvová was familiar with those debates, which sharpened the divide in the development of Logical Empiricism as a movement, which happened in Prague when Carnap came in 1932, where finished his book, Syntax of Logical Language in 1934. The letter following this bitter comment to Dratvová some days later, which Frank wrote to Jaroslav Heyrovský, a Nobel Prize winner in 1956 in chemistry and his colleague at the Department for Physical Chemistry at the Czech Charles University in Prague, is another demonstration that Frank had managed to find loyal friends in his 25 years in Prague. We know that Heyrovský was not the only one at the Czech University to whom Frank stood in good terms. Frank was noted for his close collaboration with his Czech colleagues, like the professor of theoretical physics from the Charles University in Prague, František Záviška, who had held this position since 1914.

 Václav Podaný, “Philipp Frank, Albína Dratvová, Jaroslav Heyrovský (Mnichov 1938 a poválečné osudy)”, in: Dějiny věd a techniky, XXVIII, 3, 1995, pp. 129–143.

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Heyrovský was the one who helped Frank out with a recommendation at the Institute of International Education in New York at the end of October 1938, when Frank and his wife Hania found themselves stranded instead of enjoying a well-­ prepared lecture trip through America. This letter is a rich resource, giving us additional proof of his emotions in this time period. In the letter to Heyrovský, Frank once more expressed his feelings of uncertainty and sadness and his loyalty to his university. For me and my wife the situation is quite alarming. We do not know what happens at home and I must make this big trip. Mid of December my tour will end, and I will go back to Prague soon after. I know that I will find there sad and totally changed matters. I think that our university will not exist in a proper sense. I would like to know your judgment on the situation from your perspective there. If there is any possibility to work, I would gladly stay in Prague and my wife sticks to Prague very much. But I can imagine in how difficult a situation the administration of the university in Prague must be and I know very well; that the administration must do many things which she does not want to do.21

We know from historical studies what the situation really was back home. Between 1938 and 1939 all but one of the professors had to leave their positions in the physical compartments of the German University.22 Frank stayed in the USA for good after he found helpful hands in Harvard in Percy Bridgman, the astronomer Harlow Shapely, the powerful philosopher W.  V. O. Quine, and Edwin Kemble when he arrived there to give a talk at the begin of December 1938. His situation there, in terms of salaries, was never comparable to his secure life in Czechoslovakia, because for a long time he was only able to find a half-time teaching position at Harvard, with the titles of Research Associate and Lecturer, corresponding to the German Privatdozent.23 In Prague, seventy-seven professors from the university had to leave through forced resignation: in the faculty of science alone, nine ordinary professors, two extraordinary, and eight docents fell victim to the “Aryanization” in Prague. Ten percent of all students in Prague fell victim to the racial cleansing, which was higher than the average, compared with all German speaking countries. Frank’s payment was stopped on the 1st of July, 1939 and on the 8th of November, 1939 he was retired. Philipp Frank’s first appointment at Harvard started on September 1, 1939, which also marked the beginning of the war in Europe. On the 14th of September, 1939 his former student and docent, Walter Glaser, officially got the order to occupy the chair of Theoretical Physics at the German University in Prague. Rheinhold Fürth, Professor of Experimental Physics at the German University in Prague, his first assistant and the colleague with whom he had collaborated most intensively in terms of his academic duties, emigrated to England. Leo Wenzel Pollak, Professor  Ibid.  Emilie Těšínská, “František Záviška (1879–1945) Physiker. Ein großer Verlust für die tschechische Physik“, in: Monika Glettler and Alena Míšková (Eds.), Prager Professoren 1938–1948: zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik. Essen: Klartext 2001, pp. 483–511. 23  Gerald Holton, “Philipp Frank at Harvard University: His work and his influence”, in: Synthese, 153, 2, 2006, pp. 297–311. 21 22

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of Geophysics and the Professor of Astronomy, Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, emigrated to America and eventually joined Frank at Harvard. His Privat-Docents, Otto Blüh and Kurt Sitte, also emigrated, as well as Martin Strauss, who was able to get his habilitation with Frank and Fürth in June 1938.24 Frank’s old colleague from his first years in Prague, the mathematician Georg Pick, died in Theresienstadt, as did his colleague, the chemist Hans Leopold Meyer; theoretical physicist František Záviška died in 1945 on his way back home from the concentration camp in Mauthausen.25 With these two letters from Philipp Frank, we get a strong impression of his feeling of loss, but we also get a good sense of his loyalty to his citizenship of Czechoslovakia, his loyalty to his German University and his colleagues there, as well as his loyalty to his Czech colleagues at the Charles University, which was an outstanding feature of his career in Prague. This characteristic of Frank’s academic life is mentioned in historiographical texts more often nowadays, since it was a rare behavior in the stressful situation between the Czech and the German nations in Prague.26

3.7  The Concept of Loyalty In search of a concept which helps to bind together Frank’s concrete life as he lived and worked in Vienna, in Prague, and in Boston with his intellectual life, the concept of loyalty will fit. This concept is usually applied to account for social formations in the history of nation building, rather than the concept of identity. However, in multiple ways it seems an adequate concept to describe Frank’s actions when he lived in the multinational population of the Czechoslovakian state. It makes no sense to ask what the identity of Philipp Frank is. The anthology, Loyalties in the Czechoslovakian Republic 1918–1938 (in German), published by Martin Schulze Wessel, a professor of History at the LMU, develops how loyalty could grasp the multiplicity of activities in which a person is engaged in organizing his/her life. I think that in the case of Frank’s life in Prague, which is the phase when his early philosophical outlook was put to test, where he needed to engage his political and social commitments in his concrete social context, and where he found a place for himself in the much troubled academic community in a dramatic historical transition period from the end of the Habsburg Monarchy to the founding of Czechoslovakia as a new state with a democratic constitution, and where he found in a young Polish/ Ukrainian student his wife Hania, with whom he founded a home in Prague as an  Alena Míšková, Die Deutsche (Karls-)Universität vom Münchner Abkommen bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges: Universitätsleitung und Wandel des Professorenkollegiums. Praha: Karolinum 2007. 25  Těšínská, “František Záviška (1879–1945) Physiker. Ein großer Verlust für die tschechische Physik”, op. cit. 26  Ibid. 24

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urban couple with multiple cultural interests, this concept could help to link up his pragmatist commitments in philosophy of sciences. Investment in loyalty as a citizen can help to identify his activities which allowed or even welcomed transitions, and which, on the other hand, allow us to understand some issues of significant perseverance in his work.

3.7.1  W  hat Is the Achievement of the Concept of Loyalty Over the Concept of Identity? The concept of loyalty originated as a suggestion from theoreticians of civil society27 in the 1990s to better explain the active investments of an individual citizen in a social system, which can more adequately describe the fragmented state of multiethnic modern societies than the concept of identity. Whereas the concept of identity had been promoted by Assmann and Friese28 as an analytical notion to better address questions of collective identities, the concept of loyalty allows us to analyze the agency of an individual person in its social context. For research questions concerning patterns of identity formation, it was hoped that the concept of identity could deal with national, confessional, class, and gender related awareness in building identities. The concept of difference was its analytical twin partner, with the connotation of a more elastic, more open identity, whereas its flipside was considered as the more compact, aggressive, and defensive side of identity formation. Both sides of this concept, identity and difference, were meant to do away with any static, hermetical idea of identity, which was usually associated with it before. Assmann and Friese wanted to dispense of the quasi-naturalness of this older notion of collective identities, thus describing identities as created by the permanent activity of exchange and negotiations. It was hoped that by defining identities, with their unstable process of differentiations, the concept would lose its problematic connotations with homogeneity, totality, substance, and organicity. But recent work in the historical and current processes of civilizations favors the concept of loyalty over identity because it starts at another point. It starts its investigations asking about the relationships of an individual to its social environment; it asks about the processes of investment into a society, instead of blocking the subcurrent ideas of any sort of quintessence in identities. The concept of loyalty is superior to identity, in that the change of identity is conceived of as a relation of before and after, mediated by a concept of change, whereas loyalty is conceived of as dealing with constellations of relationships, rather than with an essence or difference of identity. The focus 27  See Adam B. Seligman, The Problem of Trust. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997. Ute Frevert, Vertrauen. Historische Annäherungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck  – Ruprecht 2003, pp.  7–66. Christoph Conrad and Jürgen Kocka, Staatsbürgerschaft in Europa. Historische Erfahrungen und aktuelle Debatten. Hamburg 2001, pp. 9–28. 28  Aleida Assmann and Heidrun Friese, Erinnerung, Geschichte, Identität. Bd.3: Identitäten. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1998, pp. 11–23.

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on bonds and commitments, which does not need a concept of separation and replacement to answer questions of change, and which allows for a multiplicity of bonds and alliances, even in inconsistent and conflicting configurations, opens the view on constellations of enrichment through juxtapositions instead of replacements. Loyalty is an analytical tool for searching for reorientations of a person in a social field, which allows for attenuated, weakened relationships. Loyalty is an adequate operational definition for the active, conscious investment of any civil actor in a civil society who act under the assumption that they invest in a legitimate regime. This supposition is the basis for the associated emotions and feelings of trust and faithfulness, hope and optimism, which come with this symbolic and active investment of loyalty in collective commitments. This is typically the case when the state allows for a plurality of roles and functions which a civil person can hold simultaneously, without the danger of being called inconsistent, or worse, untrustworthy. These are the features which qualify the concept of loyalty as the motivational bundle of deliberations and emotions which describe Frank’s feelings toward democracy, for balancing different approaches, overcoming boundaries to look out for positive constellations which fit the pragmatist concern for dealing with consequences, and which asks for the thoughtful and active application of Mach’s relativity principle. Investments in loyalty come with thinking in terms of a system of reference, and it does not rest with inquiries into logical structures. Loyalty needs attentive observation of changes in the reference system, and requires us to know where, who, and what constellations will bring the system to halt or decline.

3.7.2  T  wo Different Interpretations of Loyalty in the Young Czechoslovakian Republic I want to show that immediately after the end of the First World War, and in the interwar period of the young, still ethnically divided Czechoslovakian Republic, there were different, opposing interpretations of loyalty to the democratic state in the minority populations of Germans and Slovaks, and in the majority population of Czechs. Ladislav Kunte, a democrat and catholic priest turned journalist, as chief redactor of the weekly journal Čas (Die Zeit), pleaded that loyalty to the state means loyalty to the nation. The nation exists. The content of this simple sentence of two words is deep and far reaching. If the nation exists, what then am I? Asking this question takes only this answer: I am a part, a living part of the immense existence of the nation, thus, as the part belongs to the whole I also belong to the whole. With all I am, and I have. My mind, all skills and abilities, all what I have and what I am belong to the nation….I cannot but live for the nation, not for myself, not for anyone else, but only for the nation.29  Ladislav Kunte, Vznik nového náboženství. Praha 1920, p. 165. (Martin Schulze Wessel (ed.), Loyalitäten in der Tschechoslovakischen Republik 1918–1938. München: Oldenbourg Verlag 2004, p. 9.).

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This essentialist conception of loyalty is certainly on the other end of the wide spectrum of concepts of loyalty prevalent in this new formation of the democratic constitution of the Czechoslovakian Republic. Frank’s colleague, Emanual Rádl, who was a Machian trained biologist of sensory physiology of lower organisms and a follower of Hans Driesch’s entelechy, a socialist in terms of politics and as a philosopher of sciences and head of the Department of Methodology and Philosophy of Sciences at the Czech Charles University in Prague, formulated in 1918 a short and a long text on loyalty. In the short text, he warned against the reduction of an acting person to its fight for political independence, thus reducing its possible roles in a civilized society. “During the war we are still scientists, philosophers, theologians, artists, technicians, industrialists and journalists, and we think, that the ideals, which we pursue in these domains, were ever real.”30 In his long text, he was explicit about the necessity of an education in loyalty to the best interest for the well-being of a state. Observing not only the political life but also the private societies it took me by surprise how insufficiently the necessity of loyalty is acknowledged, i.e. the honest and wholehearted feeling of devotedness, be it to one family, to the school, to a society, to a political party, to a church, to government and state. Even the concept of this meaning of loyalty seems to be strange to our public life; instead there are only effective legal commitments, economic interests and the rule of instincts, be it racial instincts or national. The nature of loyalty is only hard to explain in words; it designates fidelity, but neither a blind one nor a mere formal one, it designates shared sympathy, consciousness of shared responsibility, sense of solidarity, which does not suspense with legal formulation, but which has warmth ahead of cold paragraphs, because they are grounded in it, not contrariwise. The 19th century undermined systematically the sense for the state with its one-sided nationalistic agitation and with Herder’s concept of the nation as a natural unity vis à vis of a state which is felt as a strange entity. There was so little understanding for this that not a single demonstration was there during or after the war signaling that a thoughtful Czech would be aware, that he destructs with his opposition at the same time century old bonds and that this opposition must be individually and ethically justified, because it injured the obligation of loyalty. This want of education for loyalty is felt also after the war, as the big mass compensates it with loving sentiments to the native folk. The big challenge for the future will be to recreate the folkish feelings with educational measures so that it will see that loyalty to the state is above the commitment to tribal sentiments and that loyalty is the solid bond which connects the diverse tribes with each other.31

With the concept of loyalty, we can assess the multiplicity of Frank’s social relationships and emotional bonds and his persistence on building bridges between seemingly contradictory positions in philosophy of science and its relevance to his  Emanuel Rádl, “Kulturní politika (Kulturpolitik)”, in: Česká stráž 1, 1918, p. 3. (Schulze Wessel (ed.), Loyalitäten in der Tschechoslovakischen Republik 1918–1938, op. cit., p. 8. 31  Emanuel Rádl, “The fight between Czechs and Germans”, in: Robert Luft, Miloš Havelka and Stefan Zwicker (Eds.), Zivilgesellschaft und Menschenrechte im östlichen Europa. Tschechische Konzepte der Bürgergesellschaft im historischen Vergleich. Bielefeld: Vandenhoeck  – Ruprecht 2014, p. 355. 30

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life. It may be that the complex of his diverse social roles as a professor in a strictly ethnically divided university, as a member of the German speaking minority in a Czech state, as a non-religious Jew, as a husband in his multiethnic personal environment (due to his wife Hania who was fluent in Russian, Polish, German, French, and later, English), and as a politically left-liberal founding member of Logical Empiricism (which, as a movement, sought to engage with modern life, which it took to be comprehensible), made the transfer of his concrete life to America’s own multiethnic political landscape possible in the end, and made the ease with which he managed to readjust his social life and his philosophical work to the context of post-­ war/cold-war America comprehensible.

3.8  Conclusion Philipp Frank lived in Prague from 1912 until 1938, where he enjoyed a social and intellectual position as professor for Theoretical Physics and ordinarius of the Institute of Physics at the German Charles University. His publications, as well as contemporary witnesses, tell the story of Frank as an academic teacher whose foremost interest was to provide an integrated view on science as embedded in the social and moral assumptions of western civilization. He regarded this civilization to be still the best and most defensible achievement of the enlightenment culture of organized criticism. But he regarded his contemporary civilization to be in great danger, not because of a new worldview based on philosophical considerations regarding relativity theory or quantum theory in physics, but by a culture opposing any critique of dogmas, which formulated demands based on the Newtonian principles of absolute space, absolute time, and unqualifiable absolute values. He began teaching the new physics of relativity theory and quantum mechanics in Prague, which was accompanied by a very harsh critique on “Relativity” as undermining all those values which were claimed as guiding the best in humanity. As we learned, this fight was led by Baron Christian von Ehrenfels, the founder of Gestalt theory and a philosopher in the school of Franz Brentano’s “critical rationalism”. Anton Lampa and Philipp Frank, as the opposing partners in this fight, defended Mach’s work as the work of a positivist who drew attention to the necessary, unrestricted-as-possible research in the foundations of epistemology to cope with basic problems in physics. They defended Mach as a pragmatist who wanted to overcome the decorative, habituated, old plunders to get fit for modern challenges, in order to include as much as possible of his cleansing program. While Frank was living in Prague, this opposition between dogmatist metaphysicists like von Ehrenfels and Oskar Kraus in one camp, and defenders of the principle of relativity, which Frank described as Mach’s legacy, in the other camp, was shaped by all kinds of religious, social, and political considerations. The situation was more complex because there were also non-dogmatist defenders of metaphysics, like Emanuel Rádl and Albína Dratvová, with whom Philipp Frank established a respectful and friendly relationship.

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Given his early experience in his fight with von Ehrenberg, it seems that he consequently decided to ignore von Ehrenfels, but to preserve him as a specimen of reactionary, ill-disposed metaphysical philosophers, whose main agency is to overstep any meaningful boundaries, to discredit all philosophical positions which do not agree with him. It seems that in Prague he gained the conviction that, to oppose those people, it is not enough to follow the academic rules and stick to one’s own boundaries, which is a given in the modern sciences with its highly specialized disciplines, but to actively seek and build bridges between the diverse disciplines and philosophical camps. It seems that Frank instead was motivated to get in closer contacts with those members of the Charles University who promised interesting, fruitful debates and possibilities for building bridges and forging alliances. In this position he built bridges between disciplines (biology, mathematics), engaged in organizing two important events (1929 and 1934) on behalf of the group of Logical Empiricism, of which he was a founding member, served as dean and vice-dean from 1925–1927 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the German part of the University, edited between 1927 and 1939 a series, together with Moritz Schlick, “Schriften zur Wisssenschaftlichen Weltauffassung”, brought about in 1931 the full professorship of Rudolf Carnap as professor of philosophy of science at his faculty, organized with him in 1935 a colloquium about the “Philosophical Foundations of the Natural Sciences”, and was part of several informal and organized circles, clubs, and salons in Prague. Frank also decidedly reached out to his colleagues at the Czech University in Prague. He cooperated actively with the Department of Theoretical Physics and Chemistry (Frantisek Záviska, Jaroslav Heyrovský) and with the Department of Methodology and Philosophy of Sciences (Emanuel Rádl, Albína Dratvová). He even joined the club “Jednota” of the Czechoslovakian Mathematicians and Physicists and published a booklet “Rozvrat mechanistické fyziky” (The Decline of Mechanistic Physics), which was translated by his colleague, František Záviška, into Czech. In his introduction to Frank’s booklet, Záviška emphasized that Bolzano and Mach not only pioneered Frank’s intellectual tendency, but that they still have devoted friends and students in Czech circles in Prague.32 This was a rare thing which emphasized the stigma of “collusion” in Frank’s position in the eyes of his German colleagues but earned him great respect in liberal circles. Let me emphasize in the end that Prague seems to have turned out as the social environment which formed and deepened Frank’s intellectual habitus and social mindset, but at the same time allowed him to form this environment as well. We saw that he left structural and personal marks there. Prague, with its multiple ethnicities and its dramatic historical transition from a society troubled by an unstilled hunger for nationalist self-determination to a modern democracy with its un-essentialist regulation processes of checks and balances, formed Frank as a young man, probed his scholarship and professionalism, and forced him to strengthen his account on the

 Těšínská, “František Záviška (1879–1945) Physiker. Ein großer Verlust für die tschechische Physik”, op. cit., p. 493.

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impact of the philosophy of science for what it can and should do as a practice. In this regard, his book, The Law of Causality and its Limits, is to be seen as his situated knowledge claim which deliberately addressed his concrete environment in Prague. On the other end of his lifework, there is his book, Relativity- a Richer Truth, which can be regarded as his mature statement of the relationship between science and democracy, and which is built in no small part on his past experiences in Prague. Although Don Howard did not mention Philipp Frank, it is in the wake of a new historical interest in the epistemological and social positions of the members of Logical Empiricism in philosophers like Howard which also sheds light on Frank. It is the interest in the practice of how the group of Logical Empiricists formed a complicit group which stood on common, non-essentialist ground, which kept its loyalty while following differing agendas, like those of the conservative Catholic Pierre Duhem, or like the social democrats Ernst Mach or Philipp Frank, or like the revisionist Marxist, Otto Neurath. Their basis was that “all understood that science was central to the modernist outlook…..and that a philosophy of science must, therefore, among other tasks, theorize the manner in which science is embedded in a social, cultural, and political context and the manner in which it contributes to the transformation of the world.”33 For the intellectual and social sensibilities of our times, Frank’s and Neurath’s concern for the non-cognitive factors in theories and theoretical orientation is one of the most attractive features of their liberalism. The way Frank took his Prague environment as his partner to work on this may also provide a deeper look at his loyalty to the legacy of Ernst Mach.

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 Don Howard, “Better Red than Dead”, in: Science and Education 18, 2009, p. 199.

Chapter 4

Scientific World Conception on Stage: The Prague Meeting of the German Physicists and Mathematicians Michael Stöltzner

In September 1929, the biennial meeting of German-speaking physicists and mathematicians took place at the German University of Prague. Being the chairman of the local organizing committee, Philipp Frank seized the opportunity to arrange a satellite meeting on the “Epistemology of the Exact Sciences”. This meeting is typically considered as the going public of the Vienna Circle because its participants were presented with the famous manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis (Scientific World Conception. The Vienna Circle).1 The manifesto outlined a program to overcome the traditional nature of philosophy itself and placed the new scientific world conception within the history of the manifold interactions between science and philosophy. It presented a modernist movement that saw its roots in the Enlightenment tradition and spanned all aspects of life from formal logic to urban architecture. The papers given at the Prague satellite meeting and the extensive discussion on probability became the core of the first number of the new journal Erkenntnis edited by Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Frank did not leave it at organizing a satellite meeting and supporting the manifesto. He made sure that the members of the German Physical Society (DPG) and the German Mathematical Society (DMV) gathering at Prague became aware of the philosophical impacts of the newest developments of science, or, more pointedly, of the need for a philosophy that applied the methods of empirical science – instead of defining itself as a Geisteswissenschaft endowed with its own distinctive method of Verstehen and its distinct set of problems. 1  It was published by the Verein Ernst Mach (1929), a society founded by the Vienna Circle and its local allies, and written by Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, and Rudolf Carnap. The distinction between a private and a public phase has been introduced by Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle. Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism. Wien – New York: Springer 2001.

M. Stöltzner (*) Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_4

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Fig. 4.1  The former German theatre Kleine Bühne at Prague, the site of the 1929 opening session. (Source: http://www.theatre-architecture.eu/cs/db/?theatreId=957)

In those days, it was not uncommon for a meeting of the German Physical Society, or of the larger and multidisciplinary Naturforschergesellschaft, to feature philosophically-oriented papers and even plenary talks.2 Setting up an entire opening plenary session with philosophical talks, however, was ambitious. And thus reads the program on the Kleine Bühne on September 16, 1929 (Fig. 4.1). • Philipp Frank: “What do the present physical theories imply for general theory of knowledge?” • Richard von Mises: “On Causal and Statistical Laws [Gesetzmäßigkeit] in Natural Science.” • Arnold Sommerfeld: “Some principal remarks about wave mechanics.” The present paper argues that the Prague opening session indicates how the quest for a scientific world conception fared within the German-speaking scientific community and how it was related to the traditional debates among physicist-­philosophers that had found their expression in manifold academic addresses. Let me begin, however, with a few observations about the context of the event and a brief characteristic of the department organizing the conference.

 For instance, by Hilbert at Königsberg in the following year, see: David Hilbert, “Naturerkennen und Logik”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 18, 1930, pp.  959–963. For a broader assessment cf. Michael Stöltzner, “Philipp Frank and the German Physical Society”, in: W. DePauli-Schimanovich, E. Köhler, F.  Stadler (Eds.), The Foundational Debate. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1995, pp. 293–302. 2

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4.1  Words “Vanished Without a Trace”? Not Quite In the first chapter of his collection of essays Modern Science and Its Philosophy, Frank looked back to the first meeting: I had prepared an elaborate paper that was intended to give the scientists a kind of preview of our ideas and to prove that the new line in philosophy is the necessary result of the new trends in physics, particularly the theory of relativity and the quantum theory. …Some friends cautioned me not to speak too bluntly. … My wife said to me after the lecture: “It was weird to listen. It seemed to me as if the words fell into the audience like drops into a well so deep that one cannot hear the drops striking bottom. Everything seemed to vanish without a trace.” There is no doubt that quite a few people in the audience were shocked by my blunt statements that modern science is incompatible with the traditional systems of philosophy. Probably, most of the scientists had not been accustomed to thinking of philosophy and science as a coherent system of thought. …After the meeting, however, our committee received a great many letters from scientists who expressed their great satisfaction that an attempt has been made toward a coherent world conception without contradictions between science and philosophy.3

Frank’s lecture was subsequently published in Erkenntnis and in the scientific weekly Die Naturwissenschaften that, under its founding editor Arnold Berliner, featured not only review articles and academic addresses from all scientific disciplines, but also many papers on the philosophical foundations of science. Die Naturwissenschaften were the place where the founding fathers of relativity and quantum theory discussed the philosophical consequences of their theories. Among the authors were Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger. Before the foundation of Erkenntnis, it was also the journal  where most papers of Vienna Circle members dealing with scientific topics had appeared. Among these papers is the controversy between Moritz Schlick4 and Hans Reichenbach5 about the law of causality that had quite a resonance. Schlick received a number of pretty detailed letters from many leading physicists.6 Max Born’s letter shows that some physicist-philosophers were not pleased with the tack taken by Frank. Your article on causality has given much pleasure to me. Also, Hilbert, with whom I have spoken yesterday, was very satisfied with your paper. He and I are in general appalled by what the philosophers of today are saying and writing …. The more we are pleased that … you are capable of formulating so crystal-clear those thoughts which in us act more unconsciously underneath the surface of our creative production. Your way of philosophizing is a supplement, yes the crowning of the special research and a guide for life.  – With other

 Philipp Frank, Modern Science and Its Philosophy. New York: Collier Books 1961, pp. 49 f.  Moritz Schlick, “Die Kausalität in der gegenwärtigen Physik“, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 19, 1931, pp. 145–162. 5  Hans Reichenbach, “Das Kausalproblem in der Physik”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 19, 1931, pp. 713–722. 6  Cf. Michael Stöltzner, Vienna Indeterminism. Causality, Realism and the Two Strands of Boltzmann’s Legacy (1896–1936). Bielefeld: Bielefeld University 2003. Accessible under https:// pub.uni-bielefeld.de/publication/2304524 3 4

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M. Stöltzner members of the Viennese school of philosophy I do not agree so completely. Let alone the presumptuous tone of some writings. I have many objections in substance, e.g., against that form of positivism which Philipp Frank has recently advocated in Die Naturwissenschaften.7

It is well-known that Schlick did not like the tone of the manifesto dedicated to him. Also Richard von Mises had his concerns and refused to sign the Vienna Circle manifesto despite his strong allegiance to the thinking of Ernst Mach whose heritage figured prominently in the manifesto. Von Mises’s main disagreement was that scientific modernism was intimately tied to an understanding of the arts and architecture that went contrary to von Mises’s own. This becomes most evident in his later textbook Positivism8 that contains quite a few polemical passages and attempts to build a bridge to the Geisteswissenschaften. Still, it was published by the Vienna Circle in exile. In their Prague addresses, Frank and von Mises interacted perfectly and argued that the recent developments of physics had brought von Mises’s own views about the statistical nature of modern physics into the center of the philosophical debate. In the introduction to his seminal The Law of Causality and Its Limits, Frank9 stated that it was von Mises’s writings that, even before the advent of quantum mechanics, had convinced him to abandon his earlier conventionalist account of causality.10 Having largely worked on mathematical physics and relativity theory during the 1910s, Frank also began to integrate statistical physics into his research agenda. Since 1918, Frank and von Mises had closely collaborated on arranging a new, completely revamped version of the Riemann-Weber handbook Partial Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics. The mathematical volume, edited by von Mises, came out in 1925, the physical volume edited by Frank in 1927.11 Even though during the 1920s, both held positions at Prague and Berlin respectively, their correspondence indicates that they not only met in Vienna, where von Mises entertained his own Kaffeehaus circle, but also during the Sommerfrische  – a well-­ entrenched tradition of Austrian academics – which they spent in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) and Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně) respectively. Their understanding of applied mathematics or mathematical physics focused on concrete applications in 7  All translations from German are mine, unless a translation is indicated. The mentioned paper is clearly Frank’s Prague opening address. 8  Richard von Mises, Kleines Lehrbuch des Positivismus. Einführung in die empiristische Wissenschaftsauffassung. Den Haag 1939. Reprint ed. by Friedrich Stadler, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1990. English version: Positivism. A Study in Human Understanding, Cambridge (Mas.): Harvard University Press 1951. 9  Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1988. (Originally published by Springer, Vienna, 1932.) English translation: The Law of Causality and Its Limits, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998. 10  Von Mises wrote a long and favorable review of the book: Richard von Mises, “Frank, Philipp, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 20, 1932, pp. 772–775. 11  Cf. Philipp Frank, Richard von Mises, Die Differentialgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik. Braunschweig: Vieweg 1925/27. (Erster/mathematischer Teil 1925, zweiter/physikalischer Teil 1927.) For more details, see: Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, “Philipp Frank, Richard von Mises, and the Frank-Mises”, in: Physics in Perspective 9, 2007, pp. 26–57.

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physics and engineering, rather than on foundational issues. This brought them quite in line with Sommerfeld who contributed to Frank’s volume on “Electromagnetic Oscillations”. Sommerfeld had obtained his PhD under Felix Klein and held a professorship for applied mathematics before assuming the chair of theoretical physics at Munich.

4.2  Backstage: Physics at the German University in Prague The statistical viewpoint advocated by Frank and von Mises had a long history and was well-entrenched at the Germany University in Prague. A small Gauverein (regional society) of the DPG existed, under Frank’s presidency, from 1922 until 1934. It consisted largely of those working together with the three professors of physics active at the German University Prague; there were also some Czech colleagues and people working outside academia.12 The experimentalist Heinrich Rausch von Traubenberg (1880–1944) worked on nuclear physics. When he left in 1931, he was succeeded by the theoretician and experimentalist Reinhold Fürth (1893–1979), who had previously been Frank’s assistant. At the beginning of the 1920s, Fürth had worked on fluctuation phenomena and edited the writings of Albert Einstein and Marian von Smoluchowski for the Ostwalds Klassiker series. Both Einstein and Smoluchowski independently resolved the puzzle of Brownian motion that had vexed physical chemistry and biology for almost eight decades. The solution required to understand the position fluctuations of pollen, gamboge or smoke particles observed under the microscope as a quantity in its own right and not to register ever more precisely and explain their velocities. For, the velocities had been a mere artefact of the length scale of the light microscope.13 By 1919, Fürth understood fluctuation phenomena even as an interdisciplinary paradigm that emerged wherever scientists encountered a macroscopic and a microscopic domain. The emergence of fluctuations was owed to the fact that, according to the relative frequency interpretation of probability, there existed a region of transition where the macroscopic limit – expressed in strictly valid macroscopic laws of the kind that one finds in phenomenological thermodynamics – had not yet been reached. Here is a list of topics covered in Fürth’s review paper and booklet Schwankungserscheinungen in der Physik (Fluctuation phenomena in physics): (1) Fluctuation of colloids including the theory and experimental evidence for Brownian motion; (2) fluctuations of the quantities of phenomenological thermodynamics – including the opalescence of gases; (3) fluctuations of charge density, electric current and magnetism arising from the atomistic nature of electricity; (4) chemical  For more details, see: Stöltzner, “Philipp Frank and the German Physical Society”, op. cit.  The story of fluctuations in Vienna can be found in: Michael Stöltzner, “Zur Genese der Schweidlerschen Schwankungen und der Brownschen Molekularbewegung“, in: Silke Fengler, Carola Sachse (Eds.), Kernforschung in Österreich. Wandlungen eines interdisziplinären Forschungsfeldes 1900–1978. Wien: Böhlau 2012, pp. 309–340.

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fluctuations; (5) radioactive fluctuations (Schweidler fluctuations) including the various aspects of measuring radioactivity; (6) fluctuations of radiation (Planck’s quantum hypothesis).14 Thus, fluctuations were at bottom a phenomenon of applied mathematics, of mathematical practices shared in different subdisciplines, not a foundational issue arising in statistical mechanics. Ironically, it was Brownian motion – not the second law of thermodynamics – that convinced even the staunchest anti-atomists of the reality of atoms. The fact that Fürth was a kindred spirit of Frank and von Mises is also expressed in the fact that he contributed the entry on “Heat Conduction and Diffusion” to Frank and von Mises’s Die Differentialgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik.15 In a previous paper,16 I have interpreted the Viennese – and Cracowian – history of fluctuation physics, the almost simultaneous discovery of radioactive fluctuations by Schweidler in 1905 and the work of von Smoluchowski on Brownian motion in 1906, as the product of a peculiar combination of experimental research programs in physical chemistry, a deep knowledge of statistical mechanics, and a combination of a bottom-up empiricism with the firm conviction in the truth of the kinetic theory that were characteristic of the large circle centering around Franz Serafin Exner in Vienna. Equally significant were the experimental techniques and the exploratory method shared by the early research works in atmospheric electricity and radioactivity, the emergence of the relative frequency interpretation of probability, and a philosophical orientation that allowed the Viennese to accept statistical regularities as laws of nature. The latter harks back to Mach’s liberal definition of natural laws as functional dependencies between certain pragmatically chosen elements. All these traits figured prominently in Exner’s inaugural address17 as rector of the University of Vienna that, for the first time and supported by the previous achievements in physics, touted the idea that chance is the basis of all laws of nature. It would become the founding manifesto of a tradition of empiricist indeterminism prevailing in the Habsburg lands long before the advent of quantum mechanics that I have called Vienna Indeterminism.18 From this perspective one may consider the debate between Frank and von Mises, on the one side, and Sommerfeld, on the other, as a continuation of the debate between Vienna and Berlin that had started with Planck’s dismissal19 of Exner’s inaugural address. But the scope of the debate at Prague was much wider and concerned the relationship between physics and philosophy in general.  Reinhold Fürth, “Schwankungserscheinungen in der Physik“, in: Physikalische Zeitschrift 20, 1919, pp. 303–309, 332–335, 350–356 and 375–381. (Book publication: Leipzig: Vieweg 1920.) 15  Philipp Frank, Richard von Mises, Die Differentialgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik, op. cit. 16   Stöltzner, “Zur Genese der Schweidlerschen Schwankungen und der Brownschen Molekularbewegung“, op. cit. 17  Franz S. Exner, Über Gesetze in Naturwissenschaft und Humanistik. Wien  – Leipzig: Alfred Hölder 1909. 18  Michael Stöltzner, “Vienna Indeterminism: Mach, Boltzmann, Exner”, in: Synthese 119, 1999, pp. 85–111. Michael Stöltzner, Vienna Indeterminism. Causality, Realism and the Two Strands of Boltzmann’s Legacy (1896–1936), op. cit. 19  Max Planck, Dynamische und statistische Gesetzmäßigkeit. Leipzig: Barth 1914. 14

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While Frank and von Mises thus interacted perfectly in their plea for a new epistemology, Sommerfeld “strongly dissented in the appraisal of the philosophical background”20 of the recent achievements of theoretical physics. He spoke out against Mach, monism, conventionalism, pragmatism, and praised the harmony of natural laws independent of man – in short: he opposed many ideas outlined in the manifesto. And his address was neither published in Erkenntnis nor in Die Naturwissenschaften, but in the Physikalische Zeitschrift. Sommerfeld never held back his criticism of Mach. In a letter to Schlick of October 1932, he wrote: Positivism leads to infertility. … One may take Philipp Frank who despite all acumen never tackled a physical problem. I am not a dogmatist in a religious sense, but I am a dogmatist on the issue of natural laws. I cannot tolerate Mach’s ‘principle of sloppy laws of nature’ (Prinzip der schlampigen Naturgesetze), despite the uncertainty relation.

In his response, Schlick assented to the rejection of Mach’s definition of natural law, but defended Frank and the value of philosophical inquiry. Sommerfeld’s letter was most likely a reaction to Schlick’s attempt21 to reconcile positivism and realism under the banner of verificationism, which, as we will see below, could not sway Sommerfeld. This local background makes clear that the Prague opening session was not just the – more or less successful – roll-out of a new program that Frank had arranged in his capacity as chair of the local organizing committee, but also a clash between different understandings of the role of philosophy within and towards the sciences and about the nature of the scientific method in the light of new physics. This seems to me a good reason to provide a detailed analysis of the debate and put it into the historical context of the day. This is the objective of the following sections.

4.3  Setting the Stage: Fighting the Ignorabimus Frank’s paper “What do the present physical theories imply for general theory of knowledge?” contrasted the new scientific world conception as a consistent application of scientific methods to philosophical analysis with the outdated, paradox-laden school philosophy (Schulphilosophie) that scientists naively adhered to when going beyond their domain of expertise. Schulphilosophie may be translated as scholasticism, but the German term is typically associated with the philosophical system of the Leibnizian Christian Wolff that was most influential in Germany before Kant’s Copernican turn.22 School philosophy, in Frank’s understanding, falsely pretended the existence of a separate domain of philosophical truths investigated by genuinely

20   Arnold Sommerfeld, “Einige grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zur Wellenmechanik”, in: Physikalische Zeitschrift 30, 1929, p. 866. 21  Moritz Schlick, “Positivismus und Realismus”, in: Erkenntnis 3, 1932, pp. 1–31. 22  The paper is translated as “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy” in: Frank, Modern Science and Its Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 96–125.

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philosophical methods. Constant philosophical reflection, so he contended, could only come from the sciences themselves. It was indispensable for scientific progress because insisting on a “purely physical point of view” was the best guarantee to rehearse tacitly “a philosophy that contains a fossilization of the earlier physical theories.”23 “Hence it is no wonder that it is precisely the physicist opposed to speculation who is easily inclined to the ignorabimus of Du Bois-Reymond, with his surrender of the scientific conception of nature.”24 For a whole generation, Emil du Bois-Reymond’s25 skepticism to ever reach an understanding about the true essence of matter and force, about the relationship of mind and matter, was the most famous motto from an academic speech.26 Many fought it and developed strategies to get around. Hilbert’s battle cry, in his famous 1900 speech to the world’s mathematicians, was that in mathematics there was no ignorabimus because all correctly formulated problems were solvable in an appropriate sense.27 It was echoed in the manifesto: “The scientific world conception knows no unsolvable riddle.”28 Many emphasized that the Ignorabimus was indissolubly linked to the exalted optimism of mechanical reduction embodied by Laplace’s demon. In a paper published in 1928 in Die Naturwissenschaften, Frank described this mechanical world view as a combination of materialism and idealism and considered it responsible for the call for Anschaulichkeit that had figured so prominently in the fights about relativity theory in the early 1920s. “First, the materialistic world conception according to which all events can eventually be reduced to the motion of absolutely inelastic little particles in vacuum. … Second, idealistic philosophy with the special status of the enigmatic triad of space, time, and causality (or space, time, matter), where by means of the absurd, or so it seems to me, concept of ‘pure’ intuition, a daring bridge is thrown that leads from mystical intuition to a real optical experience of viewing.”29 The unnamed party guilty of absurdity and the enigmatic triad was, no doubt, Kant’s transcendental philosophy. And it was Mach’s critique of Newtonian mechanics and the mechanical world view, together

 Philipp Frank, “Was bedeuten die gegenwärtigen physikalischen Theorien für die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 17, 1929, p.  991. English translation: “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 119. 24  Ibid., p. 974/102. 25  Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens. Leipzig: Veit 1872. 26  For a broader assessment of the speech’s intellectual background and influence, see: Kurt Bayertz, Myriam Gerhard and Walter Jaeschke, Weltanschauung, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Der Ignorabimus-Streit. Hamburg: Meiner 2007. 27  David Hilbert, “Mathematische Probleme”, in: Nachrichten von der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Mathematisch-physikalische Klasse), 1900, pp. 253–297. 28  Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis. Wien: Arthur Wolf Verlag 1929, p.  15. Reprint with translation edited by Friedrich Stadler and Thomas Uebel, Dordrecht: Springer 2012. 29  Philipp Frank, “Über die Anschaulichkeit physikalischer Theorien”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 16, 1928, p. 124. This paper was not included in the English collection of his papers. 23

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with Mach’s biological-­psychological analysis of intuition, that had undermined this picture. In attacking school philosophy, Frank’s Prague address was less polemical and focused on a different target, to wit, the naive correspondence theory of truth, in particular, the idea that there exist truths independently of any possible experience of them, such as the ‘real length’ of a body or ‘real rest’. One who considers it obvious that an electron must have at every instant a definite position and velocity – though the measurement of them may be impossible – … is forced to interpret the quantum-mechanical calculations, which he uses nevertheless, in such a way that these definite positions and velocities of the electron do not determine the future. Since, on the other hand, the doctrines of the school philosophy in the field of mechanical phenomena require strict determinism, one is forced to assume for the motion of the electron some mystical vital causes, similar to organic life.30

The only solution is to abandon the idea of a correspondence between our thoughts and the real world altogether. “The edifice of science must be built up out of our experiences and out of them only.”31 As a standard bearer for such a consistent empiricism in which the ignorabimus loses its justification, Frank referred to the local hero Ernst Mach. After a short description of Mach’s seminal insights, Frank concluded not without a critical distance that had already characterized his obituary.32 Neither Mach himself nor his immediate students have systematically carried further his point of view. … On the contrary, Mach’s teaching, through many presentations, has been washed out into something indefinite rather than built up to a consistent scientific conception of the world. It has even been interpreted again in line with the school philosophy.33

Mach’s thinking thus became associated with a positivism that was closer to idealism than to the neutral monism that he actually advocated. In the same way as the Vienna Circle manifesto, Frank showed that the ancestry of the scientific world conception was even broader: the conventionalism of Duhem and Poincaré, the pragmatism of William James, the logical works of Schröder, Frege, Hilbert, Russell, and Wittgenstein. Among the positive results most relevant to the appraisal of scientific progress was Schlick’s dissolution of the correspondence theory of truth into the uniqueness of coordination [Zuordnung]. “Every verification of a

  Frank, “Was bedeuten die gegenwärtigen physikalischen Theorien für die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre”, op. cit., p. 973. English translation: “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 102. 31  Ibid., p. 974/104. 32  Philipp Frank, “Die Bedeutung der physikalischen Erkenntnistheorie Machs für das Geistesleben der Gegenwart“, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 5, 1917, pp. 65–72. English translation in: Frank, Modern Science and Its Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 69–85. 33   Frank, “Was bedeuten die gegenwärtigen physikalischen Theorien für die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre”, op. cit., p. 975. English translation: “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 105. 30

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physical theory consists in the test of whether the symbols coordinated34 to the theory are unique.”35 And thus he summarized the new optimistic program. The task of physics is only to find symbols among which there exist rigorously valid relations, and which can be coordinated uniquely to our experiences. This coordination between experiences and symbols may be more or less detailed. If the symbols conform to the experiences in a very detailed manner we speak of causal laws; if the coordination is of a broader sort we call the laws statistical. I do not believe that a more exact analysis will establish a definite distinction here. We know today that with the help of positions and velocities we cannot set up any causal laws for single electrons. This does not exclude the possibility, however, that we shall perhaps some day find a set of quantities with the help of which it will be possible to describe the behavior of these particles in greater detail than by means of the wave function, the frequencies.36

Let me elaborate on the four most important aspects of Frank’s standpoint expressed in the above passage. First, what conclusion can we draw from the fact that the values of Planck’s constant h observed in black-body radiation and in atomic spectra agree? To Planck’s own mind,37 such agreement was a sign that we had successfully moved up one step in the ladder from the relative to the absolute. By giving up simultaneously precise positions and momenta we have gained a new absolute constant of physics, the quantum of action. On Frank’s account, the agreement of various determinations of h did not warrant the inference to its real existence, as pretended by school philosophy. Notice that Frank did not criticize Planck by name, but example and interpretation were clue enough to spot the addressee. “The theory in which h plays a role then asserts that all the various groups of experiences, which are qualitatively so different from one another, nevertheless should give the same numerical value of h. It is therefore only a question of comparing experiences [Erlebnisse] with one another.”38 And as the true existence of a physical quantity is only uniquely defined through the agreement of all experiences involving it, “the concept of a really existing quantum of action is only an abbreviation for the group of experiences which yield one and the same numerical value for h.”39 Second, correspondence between a measuring rod and a measured body is the core of measurement. At least in principle, classical physics allowed one to maintain the idea that exact knowledge of the initial state of a system was effectively ­attainable  To restore terminological continuity with other Logical Empiricists of the day, here and in the subsequent passages I have changed Frank’s own English translation (1961). Frank wrote “assigned” and “correspondence” for “zugeordnet” and “Zuordnung”. In view of Frank’s post-war writings, I suspect that this was done deliberately to distance himself from a position he no longer advocated. 35  Ibid., p. 987/111. 36  Ibid., p. 992 f./123. In the English translation, Frank (1961) used the word “probability” instead. To a frequentist this was of course the same, at least in the present context. 37  Max Planck, “Vom Relativen zum Absoluten”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 13, 1925, pp. 52–59. 38   Frank, “Was bedeuten die gegenwärtigen physikalischen Theorien für die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre”, op. cit., p. 976. English translation: “Physical Theories of the Twentieth Century and School Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 107. 39  Ibid., p. 989/114.

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by a precision of measurement that could be increased at will. This assumption was also at the bottom of picturing determinism through Laplace’s demon. But if we stay on the level of possible experiences, each measurement of length ultimately reaches into atomic dimensions and becomes a coincidence of electrons measured by light. Arbitrary precision in such a measurement requires radiation of arbitrarily small wavelength, hence arbitrarily high frequency and energy. But this also disturbs the measured object through Compton scattering. And Frank compared Heisenberg’s disturbance argument with electrodynamics in which we cannot effectively use test bodies with infinitely small charge either. Third, even though Frank thus recapped the infamous Heisenberg microscope argument, his reading of Born’s statistical interpretation was embedded into a different context. As a Machian positivist, Frank rejected the finality claim that is often associated with the Copenhagen interpretation and remained open to future deterministic modifications of quantum mechanics. But as the deliberations about measurement had shown, so he held, setting up causal mechanical equations did not amount to actual experiences. Experiments of electron diffraction at a lattice, to Frank’s mind, demonstrated that the law of causality was invalid for our experiences of the positions and velocities of electrons. It was not excluded on metaphysical grounds. It is often concluded that electrons follow absolute chance in their choice of direction. … This follows, however, only if one starts from the picture given by school philosophy, according to which every electron has a definite position and velocity, which nevertheless do not determine its future. From the standpoint of a purely scientific conception, on the other hand, one will say that there are no individual experiences involving positions and velocities of electrons from which the future of the latter can be predicted univocally. Instead it appears that the probability that an electron will be deflected in a definite direction can be predicted from the experience of the initial experimental arrangement. For these frequencies (the squares of the absolute values of the wave functions), Schrödinger in his wave mechanics sets up rigorous causal laws. To the frequencies that occur in these laws and define the state of the system one can therefore coordinate definite experiences. This theory is called statistical. The statistical element here consists in the manner of coordination of experiences to symbols.40

Roughly this account of experience and theory can be pictured like a commuting diagram in geometry between symbols at times t0 and t1 and the respective experiences e0 and e1 (Fig. 4.2). This suggests that statistical features enter in two places that are, it is true, strongly correlated: in coordination (or assignment) and in the Fig. 4.2  The coordination of experiences e/E to theoretical symbols S

S(t0)

e0/E0 40

 Ibid., p. 992/122.

S(t1)

e1/E1

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law. Pointing to the existence of a causal equation for the frequencies or probabilities, Frank could simply relegate the probabilistic element into the correspondence, such that the ei were replaced by statistical collectives Ei. Fourth, when it comes to ontology, Frank considered statistical collectives as entities that could figure in natural laws. They were ideal objects, but within Frank’s conception all theoretical concepts represented abstract entities that were coordinated to experiences by certain definitions or correspondence rules. When contemplating possible further specifications of the quantum mechanical states, he continued (the above passage): When we determine a number through a so-called single observation, we really observe even in this case only a mean value; ‘point experiences’ are never recorded. The coordination of symbols to experiences always contains then, strictly speaking, a statistical or, if we like, a collective element. Thus it is always a matter of making the coordination so as to go into detail to a greater or lesser degree.41

Thus collectives (or, more precisely, objects derived from them) can be coordinated to single observations and, accordingly, represent a possible ontology for physical laws that map probabilities into probabilities. Any of the fluctuation phenomena listed by Fürth could serve as an example. The fluctuations of Brownian particles that we observe under a microscope were a mass phenomenon even though we could see individual particles. But these particles could not be assigned a position and a momentum in the sense of classical mechanics.

4.4  Von Mises: Escaping the Grip of Laplace’s Demon Following upon Frank, von Mises explained to the Prague congress that the recent changes towards a statistical viewpoint were rooted in a modified attitude to causality. By postulating hidden causes, it is rather easy to rephrase any statistical law in such a manner that it conforms to both of Kant’s very general definitions of causality. In this way, of course, the principle completely loses its value for science. In the limit, one would arrive at a completely chaotic world with specific laws for each space-time point. Yet von Mises’s intention was not to search criteria to protect the principle of causality from emptiness. Doing so and searching for an empirical content of the principle, would be the project of Frank’s 1932 book The Law of Causality and Its Limits.42 As it can always be trivially fulfilled, the principle of causality is not a necessity of thought, “but changeable, and will subordinate itself to the demands of physics.”43 For this reason, causality does not provide an adequate basis to assess the more

 Ibid., p. 993/123.  Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, op. cit. 43  Richard von Mises, “Über kausale und statistische Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Physik”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 18, 1930, p. 146. 41 42

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relevant distinction between determinism and indeterminism, or between the description of nature by means of differential equations and by means of probability distributions. As had Frank, von Mises remained reluctant about a final decision because absolute chance represented a metaphysical concept. “The systematic theory, as I have pursued it for more than a decade, has never known of any failure of deterministic physics other than that it becomes idle in certain cases.”44 In this respect, quantum mechanics did not represent a fundamental breach in modern physics; with minor qualifications von Mises could return to his pre-quantum paper “The Crisis of Mechanics”45 and stress the continuity between quantum mechanics and pre-quantum indeterminism. “Laplace’s demon, the executive officer [Vollzugsbeamte] of determinism”,46 can fulfill his duty only as long as the force laws are not too complex. “Newtonian mechanics only provides a useful means of causal explanation of nature as long as relatively simple force laws entail more complex motions. … Explanation just means reduction to something simpler.”47 Otherwise, Mach’s principle of economy would be violated. The deterministic approaches of classical physics can be maintained formally, or better: ideally, in the entire realm of directly observable phenomena, but in many cases … they become idle, they lose the character of a causal explanation, they do not contribute to our knowledge, to describing or predicting the course of phenomena. … Who views ponderomotoric forces, densities, and dielectric constants as things enjoying an existence independently of the task of describing nature, will consider determinism as in principle preserved but practically excluded. For those who comprehend these concepts [occurring in physical theories] only as means introduced in the approaches based on differential equations in order to jointly enable an orientation in the phenomenal world, the limits of applicability and the limits of determinism itself coincide.48

This difference became poignant when studying the transition between the macro and the micro level. Hydrodynamics, Brownian motion, and Boltzmann’s various attempts to provide a mechanical foundation of the kinetic theory of gases all show that “[t]he transition between the physics of the single elementary body, atom, proton, electron, etc., to the macroscopic phenomena is simply obtained only by statistics.”49 If one consequently adopts a purely statistical approach “the notorious ergodic hypothesis”50 becomes a solvable mathematical problem. Although the time evolutions of Brownian particles themselves do not form a collective, and, accordingly, the original concept of probability cannot be carried over to them, the law of large numbers (in the general sense) can be applied to the time evolutions.  Ibid., p. 152.  Richard von Mises, “Über die gegenwärtige Krise der Mechanik”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 10, 1922, pp. 25–29. 46  von Mises, “Über kausale und statistische Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Physik”, op. cit., p. 146. 47  Ibid., p. 146. 48  Ibid., p. 147. 49  Ibid., p. 148. 50  von Mises, “Über die gegenwärtige Krise der Mechanik”, op. cit., p. 29. 44 45

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Von Mises’s argument rehearsed a core tenet of what I have called Vienna Indeterminism,51 to wit, shifting the burden of proof onto the determinist’s shoulders. There is no justification, according to this view, to prefer a theory that provides a deterministic foundation of dynamical laws for the observable macroscopic phenomena over a genuinely statistical one if the former needs to introduce shaky assumptions, such as the ergodic hypothesis, in order to explain the observable phenomena. Another core tenet of Vienna Indeterminism was the adoption of the relative frequency interpretation which opened up a region of transition where the limit of relative frequencies was not yet reached such that fluctuations occurred. This was the conceptual space for  Brownian motion and other fluctuation  phenomena to dwell in. Delivering a succinct presentation of the frequentist interpretation that he had developed a decade before,52 von Mises stressed that the statistical collective represented an ideal object similar to a perfect sphere in geometry. The collective was based on two conditions: the existence of the limit and the irregularity axiom that blocked the choice of subsequences converging to a different limit. The latter condition, von Mises argued, corresponded to what physicists commonly described as ‘molecular disorder’. As probability calculus merely was a theory, mapping probabilities into probabilities, von Mises could relegate the problem of the status of this assumption to his physicist colleagues. This was a significant departure from other members of the movement, among them Reichenbach, who insisted that – in contrast to geometry – already the coordination between the mathematical probability and the measured values was part of statistical physics.53 The actual verification of the law of causality, and of any specific law, required a suitable notion of when identical conditions recur. Von Mises’s statistical approach had “to find out observable processes which are limited in space and time and which reoccur to a reasonable approximation. Only approximately repeatable processes are the object of physical considerations.”54 Any observation or measurement yields only a decimal number with finitely many digits. Von Mises held that those who equate the idea of causality to naive determinism extrapolate their results beyond possible experiences by assuming that the precision of measurements could be increased beyond any limit. But this reasoning, von Mises contended, contradicts the atomistic hypothesis. And citing the idea of disturbance, he concluded that the efficiency of determinism is limited to sufficiently coarse measurements. The statistical point of view was thus superior to determinism. But von Mises did not conceive of any “contradiction between a series of observations and classical theory,  Stöltzner, “Vienna Indeterminism: Mach, Boltzmann, Exner”, op. cit.  Richard von Mises, “Fundamentalsätze der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung”, in: Mathematische Zeitschrift 5, 1919, pp. 52–99 and 100. 53  For a broader discussion of the relationship between probability and causality within Logical Empiricism see: Michael Stöltzner, “The Logical Empiricists“, in: Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock, and Peter Menzies (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 108–127. 54  von Mises, “Über kausale und statistische Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Physik”, op. cit., p. 151. 51 52

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we are never forced to say that a law of classical physics is violated in any single process.”55 Quantum mechanics blocked the possibility to support determinism by reduction to atomic processes. “One has recognized that the elementary processes themselves do not admit a causal description. This was an immediate consequence of the requirement that a theory must be considered only together with the experiments serving its verification.”56 And now von Mises repeated the standard Copenhagen arguments up to Heisenberg’s microscope. But there was a difference of philosophical interpretation. In von Mises’s treatment of Born’s interpretation of Schrödinger’s wave function, there was little evidence of a quantum revolution. It is just “the same interpretation we have to give to any result of the physics of differential equations in the macroscopic realm if we restrict ourselves to assertions about what is actually observable.”57 According to Heisenberg’s theory of measurement, “also in microphysics the concrete measurement process does not represent an elementary process, but a statistical event.”58 But already when testing a deterministic theory, we have to presuppose the notions ‘collective’, ‘distribution’, and ‘expectation value of a distribution’ because there is no other way to speak of the true value of a measurement other than defining it as the expectation value of the collective belonging to it. Thus, von Mises followed the same strategy as Frank’s paper. There were significant lessons to be learned from the new theories, but they did not amount to a revolution that would have metaphysical implications. Instead they brought into better relief the core features of statistical physics and made it finally a par with dynamical causality. Von Mises could have turned his argument into a criticism of the Ignorabimus in the same vein as Frank’s speech had done. But he reserved that more general thrust for another prominent occasion.

4.5  I nterlude on the Big Stage: Rector von Mises Rails Against the Ignorabimus During the academic year 1929/30 von Mises was Rector of the University of Berlin. On 27 July 1930, he delivered the annual address commemorating the founder of the University, King Friedrich Wilhelm III. “On the scientific world picture of the present” initially targeted the same opponent as Frank’s opening address59: du Bois-Reymond’s Ignorabimus. Von Mises’s main theme was to compare the physical world picture of the 1870s  – when du Bois-Reymond had held the

 Ibid., p. 152.  Ibid., p. 153. 57  Ibid., p. 153. 58  Ibid., p. 153. 59   Frank, “Was bedeuten die gegenwärtigen physikalischen Theorien für die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre”, op. cit. 55 56

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r­ectorate  – with the present one. Of du Bois-Reymond’s in principle completed mechanical world hardly anything had remained. The convulsion began at the apparently safest place, in Euclidean geometry. It continued with the principle of causality in atomic physics and the principle of the excluded middle in mathematics. All these developments contradicted the intuitive idea of a reduction to elementary motions of atoms, which represented “wishful thinking reaching back to antiquity and closely linked to primitive habits of thought.”60 Thus atomism gave birth to Laplace’s demon, but the first consistent implementation of this reductionist program by Boltzmann’s kinetic theory of gases unearthed the concept of probability foreign to the determinism of the mechanical world view. Ultimately, quantum mechanics dashed all hopes for a future return of determinism and demonstrated the “essentially statistical character of all physical assertions.”61 But already before that determinism or the physics of differential equations hit many obstacles: it was impossible to find simple and universal force laws for many phenomena of our immediate life-world and for the fluctuations present in all physical measurements that ultimately reach atomic dimensions. In the second half of the speech, von Mises put these arguments familiar from his earlier writings into a general philosophical context. Many new developments of physics blatantly contradicted our common intuitions. But we have to view them in the same vein as the people of the sixteenth or seventeenth century wondered about the rapidly moving earth. This is nothing but a process of habituation, an adaptation of our faculties of thought and imagination to certain claims which, in actual fact, are completely unintuitive and definitely contradict the naive conception and all doctrines handed down to us before. In every epoch of truly creative progress in natural science, there has to occur such an essentially voluntary process of assimilation of thought.62

Von Mises’s conclusion closely followed Mach’s lead, except for the voluntary character of the adaptive process. Mach had instead assumed that the “adaptation of thoughts to facts and adaptation of facts to each other”63 had a strongly biological and even instinctive component. Thus von Mises followed Frank and the other Logical Empiricists in abandoning Mach’s far-reaching biologism in epistemology. But he was reluctant to accept what his colleagues had put in its place from early on: the conventionalism of Duhem and Poincaré. This conventionalism which seems to be a counterpart to the contrat social and similar extreme views in other domains, no doubt, contains a perfectly true core, but it envisages only one side of the matter. Already the far-reaching unanimity of physicists in rejecting and accepting theories speaks against the existence of free conventions.64  Richard von Mises, “Über das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild der Gegenwart”, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 18, 1930, pp. 885–893; passage on p. 887. 61  Ibid., p. 890. 62  Ibid., p. 890. 63  Ernst Mach, “Die Leitgedanken meiner naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnislehre und ihre Aufnahme durch die Zeitgenossen”, in: Scientia VII (anno IV), 1910, pp. 225–240. 64  von Mises, “Über das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild der Gegenwart”, op. cit. p. 891. 60

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Von Mises’s aim was not to endorse scientific realism along the lines of Planck65 who combined a structural realism as regards the basic principles of physical theory with the mentioned realism about constants. Instead, he argued that while theories change the experimental results essentially remain correct within their observational limits. Thus even though he had distanced himself from the conventionalism prevailing among Logical Empiricists, he emphasized that the actual decisions scientists make about any given theory are guided by the usual pragmatic criteria of theory choice: “the simplicity, plausibility, decency [das Unanstößige] of a theory.”66 And von Mises cited a whole history of such criteria ranging from Occam’s razor “until the lucid yet not always properly understood principle of ‘economy of thought’ which we owe to Ernst Mach, [all of which express] the guiding principle of scientific theory formation: Among all assumptions consistent with our present stock of experimental knowledge, we choose the one which in the smoothest way and with the least resistance adapts to our previous ideas, the one which imposes the least constraints to our previous habits of thought.”67 Coming back to the comparison of the world picture of du Bois-Reymond’s epoch and the present one, von Mises emphasized that in the wake of the extraordinary increase in scientific knowledge, “our epistemological attitude has become more comprehensive, more profound, and richer in insight. Between those days … and our present lies above all the great clarificatory work [Aufklärungsarbeit] of the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach which  – after a short period of misunderstanding – now begins to have the widest consequences.”68 And apart from relativity theory, von Mises even praised the value of Mach’s ideas for the restriction of quantum mechanical concepts to what is actually observable. It is very likely that Mach’s old antagonist Planck was part of the audience. In the end, von Mises returned to du Bois-Reymond’s Ignorabimus and its persistent effect on the claims to autonomy of the Geisteswissenschaften. Still today for many representatives of the Geisteswissenschaften the program of a naive atomistic explanation of nature represents the basis of their attitude towards the natural sciences. Extensive theories about the ‘limits of concept formation in the natural sciences’ or the ‘geisteswissenschaftliche method’ and the like are erected thereupon and try to elaborate, in a programmatic fashion, the alleged contrast between two types of viewing the world. But who looks at present-day natural science as it really is must understand that it does not close its eyes to any method suitable to impart knowledge [Erkenntnis], and that it does not possess any limits other than those altogether set to human cognition [Wissen], that is, communicable knowledge [Erkennen].69

Emphasizing the communicative basis of science was indeed a truly Machian perspective; von Mises would further discuss it in his textbook. Almost verbally  Presented especially in Max Planck, Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes. Leipzig: Hirzel 1909, and Planck, “Vom Relativen zum Absoluten”, op. cit. 66  von Mises, “Über das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild der Gegenwart”, op. cit. p. 891. 67  Ibid., p. 891. 68  Ibid., p. 892. 69  Ibid. 65

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q­ uoting Mach he instead declared that “the highest philosophy of the scientific investigator is to tolerate an incomplete world view”70 and thus emphasized the in-­ principle openness and universality of the empirical method. “As to aim, content, and method, there exists only a single science, the imitation of the world by concepts; the bipartition in Geistes- and Naturwissenschaften has only a practical and provisional significance, it is neither systematically necessary nor final.”71 But von Mises admitted that while the Naturwissenschaften set out from simple problems, the Geisteswissenschaften addressed the “more lifelike and vital and, above all, the more complicated problems.”72

4.6  Sommerfeld: Philosophy in the Edge Light Let us return to the Kleine Bühne. Right at the beginning of his speech, Sommerfeld did not mince words: Ph. Frank and R. v. Mises have assumed a general epistemological standpoint. I shall proceed less systematically by shedding light at a few, rather well-known facts from the actual development of physical theory within recent years. I am in complete agreement with the speakers before me that this development is successful and necessary. I am afraid, however, that we differ widely in the evaluation of the philosophical background.73

It is important to notice that the disagreements not only concerned philosophical theses, such as Sommerfeld’s rejection of positivism, but also the very need for a philosophy that was based on scientific methods. At a time when Logical Empiricists – through the satellite meeting at Prague, the journal Erkenntnis, and methodological disputes, such as the one about probability at Prague and the coming protocol sentence debate – were heading towards a new scientific discipline, Sommerfeld continued the traditional discourse among physicist-philosophers in a way that was more casual than even most papers published in Die Naturwissenschaften. Among the seven ‘rather well-known facts’, we find technical details from Sommerfeld’s current work in theoretical physics alongside philosophical statements that are oftentimes rather sketchy. In his first point, Sommerfeld admitted that the great Mach inspired the creation of the new phase of quantum theory. It was fully in line with Mach’s philosophy when Heisenberg, in his first quantum mechanical paper, declared as his leitmotifs the renunciation of models, the restriction to observable quantities, the creation of an abstract quantum formalism. And in this case, as we all know, Mach’s  Ibid. This famous quotation appeared in: Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung. Historisch-kritisch dargestellt. Ed. by Renate Wahsner  and Horst-Heino von Borzeszkowski, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1988, p. 479. English translation authorized by Mach: The Science of Mechanics. Account of Its Development, La Salle: Open Court 1989 (first published 1883), p. 559. 71  von Mises, “Über das naturwissenschaftliche Weltbild der Gegenwart”, op. cit., p. 892. 72  Ibid. 73  Sommerfeld, “Einige grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zur Wellenmechanik”, op. cit., p. 866. 70

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philosophy, as an exception, had fertile effects. … In actual fact I believe that his effect on physics is typically the opposite.74

And Sommerfeld rehearsed the list of failures well-known from Planck’s writings, among the Mach’s anti-atomism and his support for energeticism, and the short lifetime of Mach’s principle within Einstein’s relativity theory. While Frank, in his 1917 obituary and in the Prague speech, had tried to separate Mach, the advocate of a renewed enlightenment and consistent empiricism, from the Machians and their anti-atomism and skepticism against relativity theory, Sommerfeld threw it all right back at him. Together with positivism, he rejected James’s pragmatism that had figured prominently in Frank’s talk. The physicist does not invent laws of nature, but has to be thankful to have the privilege to discover a fraction of the magnificent unity and harmony of natural laws. The conviction about a mathematical order of nature that is independent of the researching subject and rises above any conventionalism, presents itself in the development of the new physics.75

This was vintage Planck as well. The only difference was that Sommerfeld was skeptical about assigning ontological commitments to constants of nature – or at least as far as Eddington’s attempts to deduce the fine structure constant were concerned. The error of the older Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum theory was, according to Sommerfeld, not the introduction of unobservable quantities, but its continued trust in classical mechanics that was only suspended for certain states. Despite its emphasis on observables, the new quantum mechanics had introduced more unobservable quantities, such as the Schrödinger wave function. But these quantities were benign as long as they allow a more simplified description of the theory. All this was well-­ known from electrodynamics where one uses the electrodynamic potential. There is, however, a difference. While one could remove the Maxwellian ether and cogwheel models from the theory without affecting Maxwell’s equations, the atomic model enters into the Schrödinger equation itself as potential energy. Referring to work by de Broglie, Sommerfeld took a stance that was not in synch with the Copenhagen interpretation and declared: “Neither the planetary model nor the point-like (positive or negative) electron have been disposed by the new mechanics. Only the mathematical method in treating them has changed.”76 After some remarks about the relationship between the older Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum theory and quantum mechanics, Sommerfeld explained that the matrix elements of Heisenberg allowed a systematic derivation of the quantum rules and of the transition probabilities. But the matrix elements themselves “are not quantities that characterize the state of the system, but the transition from an initial to a final state.”77 After a few mathematical remarks that showed that Sommerfeld considered the formulation as still preliminary, he declared that the fact that the matrix elements  Ibid.  Ibid. 76  Ibid., p. 867. 77  Ibid., p. 868. 74 75

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contained the initial and final state represented an extended form of causality. To support his claim, he took a wide philosophical perspective: The causality of the eighteenth century that had grown from the sole reign of classical mechanics, determined the course of events from initial positions and velocities. … The causality of the twentieth century must not restrict itself to the initial state but must take the final state into account as a co-determining factor. Quantum physics thus creates a new form of causality that differs from the mechanical necessity [Zwangsläufigkeit] and takes into account the plurality of quantum transitions, … The resulting state is therefore not necessarily [zwangsläufig] determined, but conditioned on the basis of a certain anticipation of admitted possibilities. It is doubtful whether one should speak of causality at all in this case. One could also say finality because the nature of the final state enters essentially into the mathematical formulation of the events. In order to exclude the idea of purposiveness [Zweckmäßigkeit] that is often linked to the word ‘finality’, we prefer to speak of a qualified or extended form of causality. … This form of causality is ideally suited to the requirements of physical experiments. … I also believe that in this way we meet the requirements of biology which apparently cannot make do with pure mechanism and must give more scope to probability than classical physics did.78

Let us unpack Sommerfeld’s reasoning. His primary goal was to avoid the far-­ reaching indeterminism that several physicists and philosophers had associated with the Copenhagen interpretation. If we look at diffraction patterns, we do not encounter a “scary indeterminism”, but “a model of lawfulness [Muster an Gesetzmäßigkeit].”79 Thus far Frank and von Mises could agree. But where they extended mechanical causality towards statistical laws, Sommerfeld went beyond that and invoked finality. And where they intended to eliminate unobservable quantities that provoked unanswerable metaphysical questions, Sommerfeld considered them not only as a simplification, but as a sign for another deep philosophical riddle that might remain unsolvable forever. Let us start with the latter problem. There is no absolute indeterminacy, Sommerfeld declared, neither is there reason for pessimism about physics’ abilities to better understand atomic phenomena. “Indeterminism reigns only with respect to the position of the light quantum or the electron, not with respect to the physical events. The actual results of diffraction experiments are perfectly covered by the statistical method of wave mechanics”80 Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation gives us the reason why electrons and light quanta cannot be localized. “We have no reason to declare the corpuscular image of the electron, or the wave picture of light, as their true natures. Wave and corpuscle are coordinated [koordiniert],”81 or complementary descriptions, in Bohr’s terminology. Thus far, Frank could have agreed. But Sommerfeld’s discussion of wave-particle dualism took a sudden metaphysical turn. “Can this dualism be overcome? It does not appear as if this will be possible in the physical arena. Perhaps rather through

 Ibid.  Ibid., p. 870. 80  Ibid. 81  Ibid. 78 79

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some kind of philosophical synthesis.”82 Citing Bohr83 he wondered whether complementarity extended to the relationship between physiology and psychology. And this brought him ultimately close to the Ignorabimus. Neither materialist nor spiritualist monism has hitherto solved satisfactorily the hybrid nature of organic existence in body and soul. At present we are witnessing a similar dualism in the foundations of physics. It is true, we should not light-heartedly content ourselves with this. However, if in physics both kinds of considerations prove indeed indispensable, this could perhaps shed edge light [halbes Licht] on the infinitely more difficult, but irremovable questions as to the interaction of soul and body, questions which must be touched with infinite diligence.84

4.7  C  ritique: Frank on Containing Teleology and the Ignorabimus To Logical Empiricists, this dualism between body and soul was a meaningless pseudo-problem. Frank would rail against this interpretation of complementarity in many of his later writings. On the 1936 Copenhagen Congress for the Unity of Science, Frank85 and Schlick86 were at pains to purge Bohr’s complementarity from the dangers of metaphysics and give it an empirical meaning. The great importance of Bohr’s complementarity theory for all branches of science, especially for the logic of science, seems to me that it starts out with a language that is generally understood and accepted, the language used to describe the gross mechanical processes of motion. … Atomic processes, however, cannot be described in this language, as the new physics has shown. Bohr has demonstrated in a careful analysis of modern physics that certain parts of the language of everyday life can nevertheless be retained for certain experimental arrangements in the field of atomic phenomena, although different parts are required for different experimental arrangements. The language of daily life thus possesses complementary constituents which can be employed in the description of complementary experimental arrangements.87

Let us now turn to the other point, the problem of finality or teleology. Frank addressed it in his 1932 book88 in a simplified form. Already in the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum theory, the frequency resulting from a transition between electron orbits is  Ibid.  Niels Bohr, “Wirkungsquantum und Naturbeschreibung“, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 17, 1929, pp. 483–486. 84  Sommerfeld, “Einige grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zur Wellenmechanik”, op. cit., pp. 870 f. 85   Philipp Frank, “Philosophische Deutungen und Mißdeutungen der Quantentheorie“, in: Erkenntnis 6, 1937, pp. 303–317. English translation in: Frank, Modern Science and Its Philosophy, op. cit. pp. 158–170. 86  Moritz Schlick, “Quantentheorie und Erkennbarkeit der Natur”, in: Erkenntnis 6, 1937, pp. 317–326. 87  Frank, “Philosophische Deutungen und Mißdeutungen der Quantentheorie”, op.cit., p. 316/170. 88  Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, op. cit. 82 83

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determined by the difference between initial and final energy levels. Or in formal terms, we have

n=



Ei - E f h



for the frequency ν and the initial and final energy levels Ei and Ef. If such an equation already counts as an instance of finality or teleology without manifest purposiveness, Frank contended, this would hardly be attractive to vitalists in biology. For it happens in any random process, for instance, when throwing a pair of dice. If we know the number of points we learn some particulars about the orbit above and beyond the statistical prediction that this number of points will occur in a sixth of cases. The realm of possibilities is restricted. Quantum theory allows us only to predict what will happen on the average if we examine a great number of atoms with the same initial state. … But if, in the case of an individual experiment, the initial and the final state are known, then the frequency can be predicted also for each individual atomic experiment.89

Frank’s criticism follows the strategy he applied to all other finality claims. (i) Spot the empirical content in each concrete assertion; (ii) show that this can be accommodated within a functional relation qualifying as causal under Mach’s liberal definition of causality as functional dependencies; (iii) relegate any remainder to an emotional content (scientifically meaningless) or claims about the psychology of higher beings (unverifiable). If he [Sommerfeld] uses the word “finality” in spite of this, the explanation can only be that, when the physicist leaves his field, he is inclined to demand less precision in his expressions and often allows himself to be guided by emotional factors and be induced to make pronouncements along the lines of traditional school philosophy.90

And Frank reports that Johannes Stark, a protagonist of the coming Deutsche Physik had taken Sommerfeld’s remarks about finality as an argument against quantum mechanics. This shows that the Vienna Circle pursue a containment strategy against metaphysical misinterpretation while Sommerfeld did not, even at the expense that he had to enter into his own polemics with Stark who would become his principal political antagonist after 1933.

4.8  Conclusion The opening session organized by Frank at Prague was a unique event and exposed a basic rift in the scientific community: Was there a role for a scientific philosophy within science? And if so, what were its guiding principles? Even though the 89 90

 Ibid., pp. 166/133 f.  Ibid., pp. 135/168.

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exchange between Frank, von Mises, and Sommerfeld had an effect on the scientific community, it never rose to such prominence as the fight between Boltzmann and Helm about energeticism at the 1895 Naturforscherversammlung and the clashes between Einstein and Philipp Lenard about relativity theory and Anschaulichkeit in 1920. Logical Empiricists’ interaction with the German-speaking scientific community and its organizations would continue in the following year. Due to personal contacts with the local organizer Kurt Reidemeister, Logical Empiricists once again succeeded in attaching a satellite meeting to the 1930 Naturforscherversammlung in Königsberg. The main topics were the debate on the foundations of mathematics and causality; among the speakers were Werner Heisenberg and John von Neumann. But meetings on the “Epistemology of the Exact Sciences” did not become an integral part of the German-speaking scientific community. The next meeting of Logical Empiricists would take place only in 1934, once again at Prague and ahead of the Eight International Congress of Philosophy. By then Prague had already become a temporary refuge for many scientists and scholars from the German-speaking world. Acknowledgments  Many thanks to Radek Schuster, Emilie Těšínská, and the participants of the Pilsen meeting for their comments on the paper. I also thank Veronika Hofer for so many debates about history and philosophy of science at Prague. Schlick’s correspondence is housed in the Wiener Kreis Stichting, Rijksarchief Noord-Holland; I thank Anne J. Kox for the permission to use these materials. Nicholas Danne has taken a native speaker’s look at the manuscript.

Chapter 5

Rudolf Carnap’s Inferentialism Jaroslav Peregrin

5.1  Introduction Carnap’s development from his Logical Syntax of Language1 to his Introduction to Semantics2 and Meaning and Necessity3 has often been construed as an awakening from a dogmatic semantics-blindness. Carnap’s own description of his awakening, as reproduced by Coffa, suggests an almost mystical initiation: Carnap used to tell his students a story about the first time Tarski explained to him his ideas on truth. They were at a coffeehouse, and Carnap challenged Tarski to explain how truth was defined for an empirical sentence such as ‘This table is black’. Tarski answered that ‘This table is black’ is true iff this table is black; and then, Carnap explained, “the scales fell from my eyes”.4

However, recent developments within logic and philosophy of language have indicated that to see his move from the syntactic period to the semantic one as simply a progress might be an oversimplification. The point is that many subsequent philosophers concentrating on meaning have concluded, perhaps paradoxically, that meaning is a matter of “syntax” in Carnap’s original sense of the word. (From this viewpoint, Carnap’s own terminology, which was subsequently embraced by the majority of logicians, may be seen as severely misleading.)

1  Rudof Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache. Wien: Springer 1934. Revised English edition The Logical Syntax of Language, London: Kegan Paul 1937. 2  Rudolf Carnap, Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1942. 3  Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1947. 4  J. Alberto Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, p. 304.

J. Peregrin (*) Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_5

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In his Logical Syntax of Language (hereafter LSL), Carnap held that the fact that he was studying exclusively syntax is a kind of restriction – an inevitable, and hence not a deplorable restriction, but a restriction nonetheless. He did not doubt that there exists a semantics that is not in itself dependent on syntax (in John Searle’s memorable phrase, “syntax alone is not sufficient for semantics”5), but he was convinced that it can be captured only indirectly, via syntax. However, later there appeared philosophers who were to conclude that the independence of semantics is illusory: that what we perceive as semantics is a matter entirely of syntax – or we should better say of what Carnap termed “syntax”. One of the philosophers who provoked this train of thought was the later Wittgenstein6 – his conviction was that meaning is a matter of use and that the relevant kind of use is a matter of rules, hence that meaning is something akin to the role conferred on an expression by means of the rules which govern it within our language games. He protested against the dilemma “either an expression stands for something or it means nothing” – according to him an expression can come to mean something without coming to stand for something, just like a piece of wood may become a king, a rook or a pawn simply by us opting to treat them according to the rules of chess.7 Slightly later, but independently of this, Sellars8 developed his theory of language as a matter of “rule-governed behavior”. (Language, for Sellars, is to be understood as an activity that is essentially rule-based, though it is usually not based on explicit rules.) Sellars argued that claims to the effect that an expression means this-and-so are in essence classificatory claims, spelling out the role of the expression vis-à-vis the rules which govern them. And those rules that are the crucial ones from the semantic viewpoint are the inferential ones. The recent movement “from semantics back to syntax” has culminated in what is now being called inferentialism – the conviction that semantics is a matter of the inferential rules of language and that meaning amounts to an inferential role.9 The greatest obstacles an inferentialist must face are two: first, it is necessary to show that the meanings of empirical expressions can also be construed plausibly as inferential rules; and second, it must face up to and deal with the results of logic indicating that no inference relation can ever wholly catch up semantics  – viz. Gödel’s

 John R. Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1984.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Blackwell 1953. English translation Philosophical Investigation, Oxford: Blackwell 1953. 7  Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1984, p. 105. See also Jaroslav Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2014, Chap. 3. 8  Wilfrid Sellars, “Language, Rules and Behavior”, in: Sidney Hook (Ed.), John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom. New York: Dial Press 1949, pp. 289–315; “Some Reflections on Language Games”, in: Philosophy of Science 21, 1951, pp.  204–228; “Language as Thought and as Communication”, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29, 1969, pp. 506–527. 9  Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1994; and Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter, op. cit. 5 6

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proof that there is a gap between truth and proof, and Tarski’s demonstration that inference is not capable of capturing all instances of consequence. Now, the second of these problems is something with which Carnap, in the LSL, was already wrestling. And I think that from the perspective of current inferentialism, his wrestling may be very instructive. Perhaps Carnap’s syntactic phase may be interesting not only as a prolegomenon to his more mature semantic phase, but also in its own right (and, moreover, there might be a perspective from which his move from the former to the latter might appear not as a progress at all).

5.2  Logical Syntax of Language What, according to Carnap, is syntax? In the introduction of LSL Carnap writes: By the logical syntax of a language, we mean the formal theory of the linguistic forms of that language – the systematic statement of the formal rules which govern it together with the development of the consequences which follow from these rules.10

Thus, there are two basic concepts that are interconnected with the concept of syntax: that of form and that of rule  – syntax is the theory of formal rules. And Carnap goes on to explain what he means by the attribute formal: A theory, a rule, a definition, or the like is to be called formal when no reference is made in it either to the meaning of the symbols (for example, the words) or to the sense of the expressions (e.g. the sentences), but simply and solely to the kinds and order of the symbols from which the expressions are constructed.11

The rules which constitute the domain of syntax are the formal ones, but are there some non-formal rules? Presumably yes (though Carnap has little to say about them) – they are rules in which there is a reference to “the meaning of the symbols or to the sense of the expressions”. This would suggest that whereas rules like An expression starting with the letter ‘a’ can be concatenated with an expression starting with the letter ‘b’ or perhaps An expression of the syntactic category noun can be concatenated with an expression of the category verb are formal, the rule An expression referring to an object can be concatenated with an expression expressing a property is not.

10 11

 Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, op. cit., p. 1.  Ibid.

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Carnap wants to argue that perhaps despite appearances, the rules logic should be interested in are exclusively the formal ones. He writes: But even those modern logicians who agree with us in our opinion that logic is concerned with sentences, are yet for the most part convinced that logic is equally concerned with the relations of meaning between sentences. They consider that in contrast with the rules of syntax, the rules of logic are non-formal. In the following pages, in opposition to this standpoint, the view that logic, too, is concerned with the formal treatment of sentences will be presented and developed.12

In this way he reaches the conclusion that his logical syntax, which deals with transformation rules (i.e. deduction or inference) is no different from syntax in the narrower sense of the word, which deals with formation rules (i.e. which accounts for well-formedness). I think this conclusion requires an important qualification. Let me call the syntax in the narrower sense of the word, excluding Carnap’s logical syntax, linguistic syntax, just to have a name for it. Consider a list of names, and assume, for simplicity’s sake, that it does not contain any duplicates. Consider singling out various sublists of this list. Some of such sublists can be delimited purely formally. Thus we can have sublists consisting of: all names with surnames beginning with S all names that read John Smith, or Martin Jones or James Black all names whose given names have less than five letters or their surnames have more than five letters etc. But we can have also non-formally delimited subsets: names of all persons that were born after 1980 names of all persons who are members of the local chess club names of all persons who speak Russian etc. Now assume that the local chess club consists of John Smith, Martin Jones and James Black. In this case, the sublist delimited by the second formal condition coincides with the one delimited by the second non-formal condition. Should we say that referring to a member of the local chess club is a formal property after all? This is hardly plausible. All that we have is a formal criterion that happens to give us the same result as a non-formal one and which thus can be considered as a formal indicator of an informal property. This singles out an important fact, namely that sometimes syntactic properties can act as indicators – in the above sense of the term – of semantic properties. Of course, this is not an inherent feature of any kind of syntactic properties, but there are properties that in some contexts can be used in this way. However, once this possibility is in play, it wholly changes the nature of the syntax/semantic boundary.13

 Ibid.  All of this is merely implicit in LSL; Carnap only discusses it explicitly in his subsequent writings, especially in Formalization of Logic, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1943.

12 13

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5.3  Syntax as Approximating Semantics One way of looking at formal logic is to look at it as a theory of such formal indicators. Consider conjunction. Many logicians would say that what makes a sign a conjunction is the fact that it expresses the well-known truth function, mapping two truth values on truth just in the case that both of them are truths. This is certainly a non-formal property: a conjunction sign can look however we want because what makes it a conjunction is not its form, but its meaning. Now suppose that I have a wholly formally defined relation of inference among sentences of a language, ├─, and I define that a sign ⊕ is a conjunction if for all sentences A and B it is the case that (⊕1) (⊕2) (⊕3)

A ⊕ B ├─ A A ⊕ B ├─ B A, B ├─ A ⊕ B.

This definition is purely formal and certainly does not guarantee us that ⊕ will be conjunction in the previous, informal sense. But now suppose that the inference relation ├─ is set up so that it preserves truth – that is, that if A1,...,An ├─ A and all of A1,...,An are true, then A is bound to be true too. Given this, the formal definition of conjunction does generate the same result as the non-formal one. Indeed, given that ├─ is truth-preserving, A ⊕ B ├─ A tells us that whenever A ⊕ B is true, A is bound to be true too, or, in other words, that the falsity of A entails the falsity of A ⊕ B; similarly A ⊕ B ├─ B tell us that the falsity of B entails the falsity of A ⊕ B; and A, B ├─ A ⊕ B tells us that the truth of both A and B entails that of A ⊕ B. Altogether, ⊕ behaves in accordance with the usual truth function. In this situation, the formally defined conjunction is what we called a formal indicator of the informal concept. Given this, the similarity between linguistic syntax and Carnapian logical syntax would be rather superficial – for whereas the rules of the first of them would target the forms of the expressions, the rules of the second would target meanings, and the forms would be just useful means of targeting them. It seems that it is precisely this view that is urged by Prior: It is one thing to define “conjunction-forming sign”, and quite another to define ‘and’. We may say, for example, that a conjunction-forming sign is any sign which, when placed between any pair of sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which may be inferred from P and Q together, and from which we may infer P and infer Q. Or we may say that it is a sign There he uses the term mirroring. He writes (p.3): “Thus e.g. the fact that a certain sentence S1 is true is itself of a semantical, not a syntactical, nature. But it can be formalized, i.e. mirrored in a syntactical way, if a calculus K is constructed in such a way that S1 is C-true in K.” Thus it was only later that Carnap came to duly appreciate this intricacy of the syntax-semantics relationship. (However, even then he restrict himself to hints and does not give any thorough discussion of this intricate problem.)

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which, when placed between any pair of sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which is true when both P and Q are true, and otherwise false. Each of these tells us something that could be meant by saying that ‘and’, for instance, or ‘&’, is a conjunction-forming sign. But neither of them tells us what is meant by ‘and’ or by ‘&’ itself.14

Hence from this viewpoint, Carnap’s claim that “logic is a part of syntax” should be replaced by the claim that logic deals with properties that are themselves not necessarily syntactical, and hence formal, in terms of their formal indicators.15 Or, alternatively, we may accept Carnap’s usage as an extension of the standard usage of the term syntax in such a way that inference is also subsumed under it (which is what de facto largely happened). But then we must keep in mind that syntax consists of two quite different parts – linguistic syntax, which would concern just forms and well-formedness, and logical syntax concentrating on inference.

5.4  Inferentialism But we can look at the whole situation also in an entirely different way. We may hold that inference is not a formal indicator of something informal (especially of consequence, which resides in the ineffable realm of semantics): rather, it is itself the backbone of the semantics of language. Go back to the inferences we used to characterize the conjunction sign. As people like Prior would tend to see it, they are the indirect way of getting hold of the real meaning of the sign, the truth function. But why, we ask now, must the truth function be the real meaning of the sign? What leads us to this assumption? What does one learn when one learns that the English ‘and’ is a conjunction? A reasonable answer would be that one learns that to assert a complex sentence formed by means of ‘and’ is correct just in the case it is correct to assert each of its two subsentences individually; and this is precisely what (⊕1) – (⊕3) tell us. Therefore we can say that the semantics of conjunction directly resides in the rules governing the conjunction sign. According to this view, stating what is meant by ‘and’ or by ‘&’, is, pace Prior, nothing over and above stating that ‘and’ or ‘&’ is a “conjunction-­ forming sign”. What, then, about the truth function? How do we account for the fact that it seems to characterize the semantics of conjunction? Certainly not so that the relation of the word to it would be akin to the relation between a name and its bearer – surely our ancestors did not christen the function by the term. But we have already shown that the inferential pattern constitutive of conjunction can be seen as ­determining the truth table; and from the converse perspective we can say that the truth table sums up the inferential pattern.

14 15

 Arthur N. Prior, “Conjunction and Contonktion Revisited”, in: Analysis 24, 1964, p. 191.  Viz. are “mirrored” by syntactic properties – see footnote 13.

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This lastly presented view is the inferentialist one, according to which semantics itself might also be a matter of (formal) rules. But whether we accept this or not, we should notice that wholly in accordance with the previous, more conservative view, it implies that there is a radical difference between linguistic syntax and Carnapian logical syntax, and that bringing both of them under the common umbrella of syntax might be severely misleading. Here we seem to clash with the Searlian dictum “syntax is not enough for semantics” – but this clash should not be seen as so controversial as it might look prima facie. The point is that the dictum appears almost self-evident only when we read the term syntax it contains in the sense of linguistic syntax – whereas if we construe it as a Carnapian, logical syntax, then it is far less clear why it should hold. What inferentialism claims is certainly not that linguistic syntax would ever be able to bear semantics – but it does claim that logical syntax directly captures what is constitutive of semantics.

5.5  Semantics What, according to Carnap, is semantics? We have very explicit answers to this question in Carnap’s later writings, but there is little about it in LSL. Most of what Carnap writes about semantics are marginal remarks. Thus, he writes: We only mean that syntax is concerned with that part of language which has the attributes of a calculus – that is, it is limited to the formal aspect of language. In addition, any particular language has, apart from that aspect, others which may be investigated by other methods. For instance, its words have meaning; this is the object of investigation and study for semasiology.16

From such pronouncements we learn that language has a semantics, but not very much about what the semantics consists in. Again on p. 233 Carnap writes: We have already seen that this formal method can also represent concepts which are sometimes regarded as not formal and designated as concepts of meaning (or concepts of a logic of meaning), such as, for instance, consequence—relation, content, relations of content, and so on. Finally we have established the fact that even the questions which refer to the interpretation of a language, and which appear, therefore, to be the very opposite of formal, can be handled within the domain of formal syntax.

From this we learn that questions of interpretation, which undoubtedly belong to (or constitute the core of?) semantics “appear the very opposite of formal”. And again, on page 159 we read: Questions about something which is not formally representable, such as the conceptual content of certain sentences, or the perceptual content of certain expressions, do not belong to logic at all, but to psychology.

16

 Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, op. cit., p. 5.

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Let us complement these fragmentary remarks about semantics and meaning by an explicit communiqué of the nature of semantics, as presented in Carnap’s later writings: When we observe an application of language, we observe an organism, usually a human being, producing a sound, mark, gesture, or the like as an expression in order to refer by it to something, e.g. an object. Thus we may distinguish three factors involved: the speaker, the expression, and what is referred to, which we shall call the designatum of the expression. ... If we abstract from the user of the language and analyze only the expressions and their designata, we are in the field of semantics.17

Hence the overall situation seems to be clear. An expression is meaningful in that it refers to a designatum. Those properties that concern only the expression as a “sign-design” are its formal properties; those which concern its designatum are non-­ formal. Similarly, those rules that involve the expression merely as a sign-design are formal rules; while those which concern its designatum are non-formal rules. And while syntax is a matter of the formal rules, semantics is a matter of the non-formal (non-formal rules, and perhaps also non-formal “non-rules”). Some parts of semantics, though by their nature non-formal, may, however, be approximated by syntactical means, by formal rules. Thus, the study of interpretation, which is a matter of the relation of expressions to their designata, can be substituted by the study of the relation of the expressions to the expressions of another (already understood) language. Despite this, there seems to remain some kind of semantic residuum that is ineffable in the sense of not being approximable by formal rules: it is clear that substituting translation for interpretation is possible only when the interpretation for the other language is taken for granted, and hence it does not give us any ultimate answer to the question of the nature of designation. This indicates that Carnap’s way of seeing things in LSL was closer to the syntax-­ as-­approximation paradigm than to inferentialism. Carnap was obviously (though perhaps non-reflectively) convinced that there is some part of semantics that stands ineffable. That is to say, we can integrate some parts of semantics into syntax (by finding corresponding formal indicators), but there will always be a residuum. Why should we think that syntax is only an imperfect approximation of semantics and not go for a wholesale inferentialism according to which semantics is nothing over and above that which is present in inferences? There seem to be especially two obstacles. First of them concerns empirical words, words like dog, run, or black. The semantics of these words, it would seem, cannot be a matter of inferences, or merely of inferences, it must reside in some relation to the world, a relation such as reference, representation, designation etc. Second, there is the problem diagnosed by Gödel and Tarski, which points out that syntax (axiomatics) faces its own limitations even before it reaches our empirical vocabulary: already within logic there are semantic phenomena resisting syntactic treatment. Carnap, obviously, did not think about empirical languages very much and perhaps he took for granted that the empirical part is, from the syntactic viewpoint,

17

 Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, op. cit., pp. 8–9.

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ineffable.18 However, he could not avoid thinking about the other problem, and a part of LSL consists precisely in coping with it. And Carnap’s method of coping, I think, is very instructive.

5.6  Incompleteness In 1931, Gödel published his famous incompleteness proof.19 He showed that however we set up axioms of arithmetic, there will always be an arithmetical sentence such that neither it, nor its negation will be derivable from them.20 If we assume that either the sentence or its negation must be true, then it follows that there is a true sentence that is unprovable. It seems to follow that provability can never catch up truth – that it may act at best as its imperfect approximation. Moreover, it would seem that the truth of the unprovable true sentence is fixed by the axioms of arithmetic. Indeed, the fact that the sentence is true follows from what it means (its meaning can be captured metaphorically as “I am not provable”) and any meaning it has is conferred on it (more precisely on the terms it consists of) by the axioms. So there is a sense in which the truth of the sentence follows from the axioms, or is their consequence; but the sentence cannot be derived from the axioms. Hence it would seem that something similar to what we concluded about provability and truth holds also for derivability (or inferability) and consequence.21 An even more instructive case for consequence eluding inference was presented by Tarski.22 He pointed out that whereas the conclusion All natural numbers have the property P is a consequence of the infinite set of premises of the shape n has the property P, it cannot be derived from it. (The reason, of course, is that it does not follow from any finite subset of the set of the premises.) And though this example may have controversial aspects, it vividly illustrated the difference between consequence and inference. Hence it would seem that the tools of Carnapian logical syntax – tools like derivations, inferences or proofs – are bound to stop short before capturing genuinely semantic terms such as truth and consequence  – provability  Hence we will also not discuss this problem here. I have done so elsewhere: Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter, op. cit., Chap. 2. 19  Kurt Gödel, “Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I”, in: Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 38, 1931, pp. 173–198. 20  Jaroslav Peregrin, “Gödel, Truth and Proof”, in: Journal of Physics: Conference Series 82, 2007. http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/82/1/012006 21  True, if we formalize arithmetic as a first-order theory, the unprovable sentence will not come out as a consequence of the axioms, and derivability will coincide with consequence. But this is just because first-order logic is a priori set up so that any consistent theory has a model – in other words, that consequence in it will duplicate derivability. This is different when we formalize arithmetic within second-order logic. 22  Alfred Tarski, “O pojeciu wynikania logicznego”, in: Przeglad Filozoficzny 39, 1936, pp. 58–68. English translation “On the Concept of Following Logically”, in: History and Philosophy of Logic 23, 2000, pp. 155–196, 18

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will never catch up truth (the whole truth, that is) just as derivability (or inferability) will never catch up consequence. And Carnap, already in LSL, was very well aware of this. What is his reaction? Unlike in his later writings, where, influenced by Tarski, he goes for a construction of formal semantics, in LSL he tries to extend the possibilities of logical syntax to make it more inclusive and to bridge the Gödelian gap between syntax and semantics. In the case of his Language I the situation is quite straightforward – he considers a relaxation of the concept of rule of proof so that it would encompass the infinitistic omega rule: P(1), P(2), P(3), ... ├─ ∀xP(x) In contrast to many other logicians, Carnap was quick to grasp the point and consequences of Gödel’s proof.23 (It is remarkable, as Dawson documents,24 how slow many very clever logicians were in comprehending this.) It was clear to him that the gap disclosed by Gödel is nonnegotiable – unless you go for a wider concept of derivation. And as the Tarskian example above suggests, one of the causes for inference lagging behind consequence is its inability to accommodate inferences with an infinite number of premises. So what if we make room for such kind of inferences? On the positive side, it closes not only the Tarskian, but also the Gödelian gap. (It is well known that adding the omega rule dispenses with the incompleteness of arithmetic.) On the negative side, it stretches the concept of rule to encompass rules nobody is ever able to apply. But of course, this is the same with Tarskian semantics: saying that a sentence is true if it is satisfied by every member of an infinite domain is equally unusable in practice as saying that it is true if it is derivable from an infinite number of premises. We are limited in where we can get with rules in the strict sense of the word; we can get further with semantics, but only at the cost of the “get” becoming more virtual than real; and if we accept this virtualization of the “get”, we need not abandon rules in favor of semantics, because we can do the same with a relaxed concept or rule.

5.7  Semantics vs. Generalized Rules Coffa argues that Carnap’s relaxation, in his Language I, of the notion of rule of inference in order for it to encompass the omega rule, “was apparently inspired by an incorrect diagnosis of the problem”.25 Coffa thinks that Carnap fell on the correct  “Far from having been written in ignorance of Gödel’s results, Carnap’s LSL was inspired by an appreciation of the significance of Gödel’s work that only a handful of logicians could match at the time,” as Coffa (op. cit., p. 286) puts it. 24  John Dawson, “The Reception of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems”, in: Thomas Drucker (Ed.), Perspectives on the History of Mathematical Logic. Boston: Birkhäuser 1991, pp. 84–100. 25  Coffa, op. cit., p. 288. 23

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solution only in the context of Language II - and the correct solution was something quite close to Tarskian semantics. Indeed Tarski himself claims that this definition “cannot be extended in a natural way to other less elementary languages.”26 Why did Carnap abandon his solution based on the relaxation of rules of inference? Coffa writes: “Carnap never explained the reason for this change of strategy, but one may conjecture that at some point he realized that the first technique had worked for the case of Language I only because of the weakness of its expressive power.”27 But why would it not work for the other languages? Coffa first cites Tarski: The profound analysis of Gödel’s investigations shows that whenever we have undertaken a sharpening of the rules of inference, the facts, for the sake of which this sharpening was felt to be necessary, still persist, although in a more complicated form, and in connexion with sentences of a more complicated logical structure. The formalized concept of consequence will, in extension, never coincide with the ordinary one.28

This is certainly true; but from the current viewpoint it is irrelevant. The point is that allowing for the omega rule cannot be considered as “sharpening” in this sense – on the contrary, it is, as it were, “blunting”. The omega rule is not a rule that can enter what we call proofs in the strict sense of the word; and precisely for this reason it is eligible to close the gap between inference and consequence. But there were more concrete reasons for Carnap abandoning his attempts at a “syntactic” treatment of consequence in favor of a “semantic” one. These are connected with the fact that Language I contained merely first-order quantification (especially quantification over the domain of natural numbers). Language II contained also higher-order quantification. And if we consider quantification over predicates, Coffa is convinced, we cannot find a solution analogous to the addition of the omega rule. Why not? There are two reasons, one more general and one more specific. The general reason is that there may be universes with nameless individuals. In the case of Language I, the universe contained only natural numbers, each of which had a name  – the corresponding numeral. And it seemed that it was only this fact that allowed the omega rule to do the work it did – for if the universe were to contain, aside of all the normal natural numbers, one more object which would have no name, then it would not seem right to derive ∀xP(x) from P(0), P(1), P(2), ..., and there would be no way of adding a premise to make it work. The more specific reason is that once we move to predicative quantification, then there are bound to be nameless objects in our domain. Indeed, the number of subsets of the set of natural numbers is uncountable, and hence there must be uncountable number of potential denotations for predicates, and yet we can only have a countable amount of names. So in this particular case no generalized rule tantamount to the omega rule seems to be available.

 Tarski, “On the Concept of Following Logically”, op. cit.  Coffa, loc. cit. 28  Alfred Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1956, p. 295. 26 27

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There is no doubt that Carnap did abandon his thoughts about generalized rules in favor of semantics and that it was roughly for the reasons sketched by Coffa. However, our question now is whether his change was inevitable (and if not, whether it was reasonable), or whether Carnap could have continued on his early inferentialist track, avoiding Tarskian semantics and anticipating current inferentialism. And my view is that indeed he could. Consider the problem of nameless individuals. How do we know that we have a universe with such individuals? According to Tarskian semantics, the specification of the universe is part of the specification of the language. But in real life, we do not and cannot (perhaps with some marginal exceptions) do this. We establish what we are talking about by means of talking (with the marginal exception of ostension, which, however, does not play a role in the case of sets of numbers). Thus, the fact that we do not want to infer ∀xP(x) from P(0), P(1), P(2), ..., cannot be seen as a consequence of the fact that our universe of discourse contains an object over and above the natural numbers, but rather as constitutive of the fact – saying that ∀xP(x) is not inferable from P(0), P(1), P(2), ... is nothing else than saying that there is a surplus object in the universe.29 What, then, about the domain of sets of individuals that are to interpret unary predicates in Language II (plus all the still more complex domains “above” it)? Clearly not all such sets can have names, at least not within a fixed, countable language. Thus we cannot have rules analogous to the omega rule. But how much does Tarskian semantics help us with this? Seemingly, it tells us when any sentence of the form ∀xP(x) is true, namely when P(x) is satisfied by every individual of the universe. However, this is to say that we can conclude ∀xP(x) if we have P(x) is true of i, where i runs through all the elements of the relevant domain. And this, of course, is nothing else than an analogue of a generalized omega rule, only with metalinguistic premises (the number of which equals the cardinality of the domain – and thus, in the case of an uncountable domain, it is uncountable). Hence it is not clear why this would be any better than a straightforward generalized omega rule with premises taken from the object language, rather than the metalanguage (though this would require adding the requisite names to it).30

 Moreover, it seems that natural languages, though they certainly do not contain names of everything that is, potentially, in their universe of discourse, incorporate mechanisms that allow for creating such names (and indeed it would seem that to be in the universe is to be a potential referent of such a name). 30  See Philippe de Rouilhan, “Carnap on Logical Consequence for Languages I and II”, in: Pierre Wagner (Ed.), Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2009, pp. 121–146. 29

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5.8  Conclusion Inferentialism offers us a straightforward interpretation for logical connectives such as conjunction. Two obstacles, however, prevent it from being easily extendable to encompass the whole of language. One obstacle is constituted by the empirical terms (the semantics of which seem to have to be based on something like reference or representation), and the other obstacle follows from the results of Gödel and Tarski. Carnap was not interested in the first difficulty (the languages he considered were not empirical), but the second was one of his central topics. And he indicated how to overcome it by means of his “syntax” – i.e. in a way which nowadays would be called inferentialistic. True, Carnap himself seems to have dismissed this solution, abandoning it first in favor of what came close to Tarskian semantics and later by the Tarskian semantics itself. In my view, however, this was not necessary. Carnap managed to show that it is rules  – especially what he called formal rules  – that may be rigorously studied. (He insisted that it is only formal rules, but these were not rules that have nothing to do with semantics, but rather rules which tackled semantic properties merely by means of syntactic indicators – at least thus I have argued.) However, from the viewpoint of current inferentialism he did not appreciate that rules are not only something via which we must study language, but also something that is constitutive of language. Nevertheless, the contribution of Carnap, especially of his LSL, to the understanding of rules, and especially inferential rules, with respect to syntax, semantics, and language in general, was profound. When Tarskian semantics and model theory came to dominate as the apparently proper basis of logic and logical semantics, Carnap’s early work became overshadowed; however, in recent decades the interest in rules has resurfaced both in logic (especially thanks to thinkers such as Dummett and Prawitz31) and in the philosophy of language, where it has morphed into inferentialism. From the current vantage point, then, Carnap’s investigations from LSL are much more interesting than even the later Carnap himself would have appreciated. Acknowledgments  Work on this paper has been supported by Research grant No. 13-21076S of the Czech Science Foundation.

31  See, e.g., Heinrich Wansing (Ed.), Dag Prawitz on Proofs and Meaning. Dordrecht: Springer 2014.

Chapter 6

Minimum Dwellings: Otto Neurath and Karel Teige on Architecture Tomáš Hříbek

While Prague was the venue for a key meeting of logical empiricists in 1929 and, subsequently, a base for Rudolf Carnap, who held a professorship at the German-­ speaking wing of the Prague University for several years during the 1930s, it is nevertheless the case that the Vienna Circle had virtually no impact on the Czech philosophers of the time. The Czech scene was dominated by the followers of the old-fashioned, nineteenth century positivism (František Krejčí and his school) and various spiritualist philosophies (Vladimír Hoppe, Karel Vorovka and others), with some phenomenology thrown into the mix (Jan Patočka and the Prague Linguistic Circle). Within the Slavic philosophical community, the only true believer in the doctrines of logical empiricism in the 1930s and 1940s was to be found in Slovakia (Igor Hrušovský). Accordingly, when it comes to the issue of the influence of logical empiricism on the work of Czech-speaking philosophers, historians have usually concentrated on its echoes in the work of some Marxist revisionists during the 1960s. However, I shall show that one can, in fact, speak of a certain intellectual correspondence, even though not a direct influence, between some currents within interwar Czech-speaking culture and Viennese logical empiricism. This correspondence can be found between the views of the Czech art and architecture critic, Karel Teige, and those of the leading figure of the Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath. Both of them achieved, albeit independently, a strikingly similar understanding of architecture as a scientific activity to be integrated into the scientific conception of the world. Neurath’s involvement in the Austrian settlement movement and, later, in the Bauhaus and the CIAM, is relatively well-known, whilst Teige’s role as a theorist of modern architecture has only recently begun to be appreciated beyond his homeland. The reason for this neglect is the Cold War, during which the legacy of East European modernism fell into oblivion in the West, while it was ignored or banned in the East. I shall explore both the similarities and differences between Neurath and Teige on architecture. In T. Hříbek (*) Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_6

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the first section I shall describe the manner in which each participated in the modern architecture movement in the interwar period. I shall trace both authors’ critical judgments of the work of architects and architectural theorists, in particular Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Hannes Meyer and Josef Frank, some of whom Neurath and Teige admired in equal measure or even knew personally. However, they both also kept a similar distance from what might be termed “architectural formalism” within the modern movement; and, to be sure, they also differed on such matters as the meaning of international modernism, the details of architectural and urban design, and the social mission of architecture. In the second section I shall examine the claim that the commonality between Neurath and Teige reaches even deeper, to the level of a shared philosophical doctrine. Here I shall reach a rather skeptical conclusion, arguing in particular that we cannot go so far as to ascribe to Teige elements of logical empiricism. After all, there is no evidence that Teige ever met Neurath or any other member of the Vienna Circle, nor that he ever studied their theories. Despite the lack of a precise doctrinal overlap, however, I shall argue in the final, third section that both the Austrian philosopher and the Czech architectural theorist shared broad theoretical commitments that motivated their similar views on architecture.

6.1  Against Architectural Formalism Both Otto Neurath and Karel Teige became involved in the modern architecture movement following World War I  — Neurath as an organizer of the cooperative settlement movement in Austria and Teige, a generation younger, as a promoter of all things modern in the newly-founded Czechoslovakia. Both being committed socialists, they were drawn to modern architecture for its potential as a vehicle for social change, rather than a mere aesthetic. Thus Neurath saw the Gartensiedlungen as an opportunity to help socialism emerge from below, after the failure of his attempt to impose it from above as a member of the short-lived radical government of Bavaria in 1919. If people learned how to build their own simple homes and grow their own produce in allotments, reasoned Neurath, it would not only alleviate the housing and food shortages that beset Austria after the war but also effectively create a self-organizing community outside the confines of the capitalist market system. Specifically, the uniformity of simple terraced houses, as promoted by Neurath, was not dictated solely by financial necessity. As he explained in a booklet about the aims of the settlement movement, “[t]he uniformity of dwellings (types), the uniformity of building components (Norms) is a result of thrift, but also of a sense of equality.”1 This explains Neurath’s disappointment when the social democratic  Otto Neurath, Österreichs Kleingarten- und Siedlerorganisationen. Wien: Kommissionsverlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung 1923, p. 34. On Neurath’s involvement in the Austrian settlement movement, see Nader Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers 2008, Part 1; and Gűnther Sandner, Otto Neurath: Eine politische Biographie. Wien: Paul Zsolnay Verlag 2014, ch. 5.

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g­ overnment in Vienna withdrew its support for the settlement movement in 1923 and decided to promote instead the construction of high-rise tenements  — the famous Gemeindebauten, many of which survive to this day. Neurath criticized the new building program for a lack of unified planning, advanced building techniques and scientific spatial organization. He also saw the pomposity of its architectural form — what with the enormous arches in the best known of these tenement projects, the Karl-Marx-Hof of 1930 — as financially wasteful. He alludes to the latter at the close of his 1928 book, Personal Life and Class Struggle: Those who from old days are used to outward appearances and pomp will endeavor to build a block of people’s apartments of vast dimensions in the same old style, but the task itself imposes plainness and soon limits attempts at sacrificing human happiness to external appearances. The mass of proletarians above all wish to live in comfort, rather than to gladden the eyes of passers-by with façades. The architecture of appearances of baroque times is hardly possible today, when self-governing bodies put up utilitarian buildings in the most economical way, controlled by the entire population. The more precisely the function is defined, the less “artistic” freedom remains for the builder; a railway station, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a block of people’s apartments cannot be built in too many different ways if the function stands in the foreground.2

Years later, Teige critiqued the Gemeindebauten is some of the same terms in his most important book on architecture, The Minimum Dwelling (1932). It is arguable that he goes even further in his critique than Neurath, a point to which I shall return. In the late 1920s, however, both of them were drawn in the same direction towards scientifically-planned and technologically advanced architecture, which was at the time pursued not too far from either Vienna or Prague, namely at the Bauhaus school of architecture and design, which opened its brand new building, designed by the school’s director Walter Gropius, in Dessau in 1926. Neurath had briefly visited Dessau that year in order to inspect the industrial construction methods used at Gropius’ experimental Tőrten settlement, the lack of which he later criticized in Vienna. However, the “functionalist”, “scientific” and sachlich understanding of architecture at the Bauhaus reached its extreme only under a new director, the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer, who was appointed in 1928. In texts such as his provocative manifesto of the same year, “building,” [sic!] Meyer argued that once human life was fully understood scientifically and the building process became industrialized and standardized, the traditional concept of architecture as a fine art would become obsolete. Architecture was thus reduced to the science and technology of building: all things in this world are a product of the formula: (function times economy)… these things are, therefore, not works of art… all art is function and is therefore unartistic. building is a biological process. building is not an esthetic process… architecture as “an emotional act of the artist” has no justification. architecture as “a continuation of the traditions of building” means being carried along by the history of architecture. this functional, biological interpretation of architecture as giving shape to the function of life, logically leads 2  Originally published as Lebensgestaltung und Klassenkampf. Berlin: E. Laub 1928. Cited from the English translation in Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, edited by Marie Neurath and Robert S. Cohen. Dordrecht: Reidel 1973, p. 257.

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Similarly, in a later paper “Über marxistische Architektur” (1930), Meyer declares: “architecture is no art of building (baukunst) anymore. building has become a science. architecture is the science of building (bauwissenschaft).”4 Thus, architecture might have been one of the fine arts in the past, but it has recently become scientific. This notion appears even more radical compared to Neurath’s previously cited opinion that modern building methods leave the architect only a “less artistic freedom” without, presumably, eliminating all of it. Given that he put so great a premium on science, Meyer was naturally attracted to the ideas of the members of the Verein Ernst Mach  — just about to be transformed into the Vienna Circle — which he probably learned from Neurath. Between 1929 and 1930 Meyer invited not only Neurath but also Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank, as well as Frank’s brother Josef, a noted architect and Neurath’s colleague and friend from the settlement movement, as guest lecturers to the Bauhaus. These were the short few years of hope shared by artists and scientists alike that a unified scientific conception of the world was possible. Carnap expressed this sentiment in the preface to his most important book of this period, The Logical Structure of the World (1928): We feel that there is an inner kinship between the attitude on which our philosophical work is founded and the intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in entirely different walks of life; we feel this orientation in artistic movements, especially in architecture, and in movements which strive for a meaningful form of human life, of personal and collective life, of education, and of an external organization in general.5

This is marvelous, but also pretty vague, suggesting as it does a near perfect harmony of opinion. At any rate, the story of the involvement of Otto Neurath, Josef and Philipp Frank and others in the international architecture movement, which had been forgotten for decades, first needed to be rediscovered. Some credit for this goes to “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism,” a seminal

3  Hannes Meyer, “building” (1928), in: Hans M. Wingler (Ed.), Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1969, p. 153–154. (Like other avant-garde writers, including sometimes Teige, Meyer eliminates the use of capital letters.) 4  Hannes Meyer, “Über marxistische Architektur” (1930), cited from the reprint in: Mayer, Bauen und Gesselschaft: Schriften, Briefe, Projekte, edited by Lena Meyer-Bergner, introduced by KlausJürgen Winkler. Dresden: VEB Verlag 1980, p. 92 (my translation). 5  Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World. Translated by Rolf A. George. Berkeley, Cal.: The University of California Press 1967, p. xviii. Cf. Also the later testimony of Herbert Feigl, who wrote that “Neurath and Carnap felt that the Circle’s philosophy was an expression of the neue sachlichkeit which was part of the ideology of the Bauhaus.” Herbert Feigl, “Wiener Kreis in America”, in: Robert S. Cohen (Ed.), Inquiries and Provocations. Dordrecht: Reidel 1981, p. 637.

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1990 paper by the historian Peter Galison.6 Now we shall inquire whether his account is either complete or entirely accurate. It is incomplete because it fails to mention, among other things, that at Meyer’s invitation, in January 1930, between Neurath’s visits of 1929 and 1930, Teige also showed up at the Bauhaus for a weeklong lecture course. (The topic was modern typography and advertising design). Prior to this visit, Teige had already published a work of architecture theory, the iconoclastic article, “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’” (1925), and by 1928 had completed one of the earliest histories of the modern architecture movement produced in any language, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia (it being finally published as a book in 1930). The latter work contained Teige’s seminal paper, “Toward a Theory of Constructivism.”7 While in Dessau, Teige finished the manuscript of another important text, “Towards a Sociology of Architecture.”8 It sketches a theory of architecture in the uncompromising style of technological-determinist Marxism (later developed in Teige’s The Minimum Dwelling). It was probably on the strength of the contents of this manuscript that Meyer invited Teige as early as March 1930 to give another lecture course at the Bauhaus, this time exclusively on the subject of architecture, and that he even sought a permanent appointment for Teige. Meyer would find Teige’s principles congenial: “[architecture] ceases to be art and craft. it is a result of modern manufacturing methods and industrial needs; here, the epoch of styles based on craft and manual skill has ended. architecture becomes science.”9 Consistent with this assumption, in the rest of “Toward a Sociology of Architecture” Teige went on to determine the requirements of modern design by referring strictly to empirical, often quantifiable data concerning the density of population, access to light and fresh air, industrial pollution, etc.10 Unfortunately, Teige’s appointment fell through due to Meyer’s abrupt dismissal from the directorship of the Bauhaus in August 1930, forced by the fears that he was leading the school in too radical a direction. “I just want to tell you briefly that they decided to ‘let me go’ today,” Meyer wrote to Teige on 31 July 1930.11 Teige stopped all further cooperation with the Bauhaus in protest, published several articles in Meyer’s defense and arranged for Meyer’s visits to Czechoslovakia during the early 6  Peter Galison, “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism”, in: Critical Inquiry 16, 1990, pp. 709–752. See also Peter Galison, “The Cultural Meaning of Aufbau”, in: Friedrich Stadler (Ed.), Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Developments. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 1. Dordrech: Kluwer 1993, pp. 75–94. 7  All the aforementioned texts are now available in English in Karel Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings. Introduction by Jean-Louis Cohen, translations by Irena Žantovská Murray and David Britt. Los Angeles, Cal.: The Getty Research Institute 2000. 8  This text came out in Czech as “K sociologii architektury“in the avant-garde revue ReD 2, 6–7, 1930, pp. 161–223. So far it remains untranslated. 9  Teige, “K sociologii architektury”, op. cit., p. 171. (My translation; the elimination of capitals and bold lettering is Teige’s.) 10  Cf., e.g., ibid., p. 187. 11  Cited in: Elaine S. Hochman, Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism. New York: Fromm International 1997, p. 242.

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1930s. Neurath and Josef Frank, for their part, published a joint article celebrating Meyer’s accomplishments, in particular his striving “to establish a biological and sociological foundation for architecture,” and conveying “the importance of the sciences” to architecture students.12 Teige, Neurath and Frank were briefly involved in other international modern architecture institutions, such as the Deutscher Werkbund and the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM): Frank was invited to participate in the Deutscher Werkbund’s Weissenhofsiedlung Exhibition in Stuttgart; a year later he was a founding member of the CIAM; Teige participated in the Third CIAM Congress in Brussels in the fall of 1930; and Neurath was the only non-architect at the Fourth Congress in Athens in the summer of 1933.13 However, all these engagements ended acrimoniously, generally for similar reasons. This is where one needs to correct Galison’s story (which portrays the Viennese theorizing, as represented in particular by Neurath as in essence articulating an ideology for the Neue Sachlickeit and places Frank “at the center of the new architecture”14). The architectural historian Eve Blau has already revised Galison’s interpretations of Neurath and Frank, demonstrating that they were dissenting voices within the modern movement15; I shall further complicate the story by explaining some similarities and differences between on the one hand Neurath (and Frank) and Teige, on the other. Neurath was growing increasingly dissatisfied with what he perceived as the formalism of modern architecture and design. As early as 1926 he had published an article in which he complained that “the necessity of an architecture free of ornament and decoration, which views the building as a kind of machine, is self-evident and yet it happens so little, despite the fact of being so often talked about.”16 The reason for this failure to design truly machine-like buildings lies, according to Neurath, in a mistaken focus on the external appearance of the machine, instead of its internal functioning. Neurath illustrates this focus on external appearances by the reproduction of a painting The Scaffold, a typical Fernand Léger of this period

 Josef Frank and Otto Neurath, “Hannes Meyer“, in: Der Klassenkampf: Sozialistische Politik und Wirtschaft 4/18, 1930, pp. 573–575. Quoted from the translation in Josef Frank, Schriften/Writings, Vol. 1. Edited by Tano Bojankin, Christopher Long and Iris Meder. Wien: Metro Verlag 2013, p. 439. 13  For the history of Frank’s strained relations with the institutions of international architecture, see Christopher Long, Josef Frank: Life and Work. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2002, especially ch. 5. For Neurath, see Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis, op. cit., Part 3, and Sandner, Otto Neurath: Eine politische Biographie, op. cit., ch. 5. For Teige, see Klaus Spechtenhauser and Daniel Weiss, “Karel Teige and the CIAM: The History of a Troubled Relationship”, in: Eric Dluhosch and Rostislav Švácha (Eds.), Karel Teige, 1900–1951: L’Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1999, pp. 216–255. 14  Galison, “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism”, op. cit., p. 723. 15  Eve Blau, “Isotype and Architecture in Red Vienna: The Modern Projects of Otto Neurath and Josef Frank”, in: Austrian Studies 14, 2006, pp. 227–259. 16   Otto Neurath, “Rationalismus, Arbeiterschaft und Baugestaltung”, in: Der Aufbau: Ősterreichische Monatshefte für Siedlung und Stadtebau, 5, 1926, pp. 49–54. (My translation.) 12

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which construes a post-cubist composition out of disconnected machine-like shapes. For Neurath, this is a pure aesthetic with no understanding of modern technology. The architect who follows modern painting is bound to build houses that might look interesting in photographs, but will not be comfortable and will be rejected by the working class tenants for whom these buildings are intended. Neurath expressed the same opinion regarding modern furniture design, which strove to achieve an industrial look, such as the famous Bauhaus tubular steel furniture.17 Neurath’s opposition to the “machine aesthetic” was shared by his friend Josef Frank, who published a scathing critique of new design in the exhibition catalogue of the German Werkbund in 1927. Although he adopted such essential elements of modern architecture as a flat roof, simple shape and unassuming façade, Frank disagreed sharply on the topic of interior design. He condemned the new “functionalist” aesthetic as ignorant of the needs and psychology of the working classes. The working person, whose life is “filled with pathos […] requires sentimental surroundings,” including “rich ornament.” By contrast, those “who think continuously […] make the demand for absolute sparseness.”18 However, the notion that we have to either discard or redesign all our furnishings so that they look machine-like is misconceived: Our contemporary life is rich enough to assimilate many things, to which we have grown accustomed, despite it having originated from an earlier period of development […] One cannot ride today in Achilles’s chariot anymore than in Napoleon’s; but one can sit on their decorated chairs.19

As far as I can see, Teige started out as exactly the kind of formalist targeted by Neurath. In one of his earliest publications, the 1923 notes on Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, he joined in the machine-worship of the French founder of modern design. He speaks of the “birth of new forms” and a “modern style” to be seen in “industrial art, ferroconcrete buildings, automobiles, aviation, radiotelegraphy, cinema, photography, linotype.” However, he never expresses any interest in the inner functioning of these things, instead focusing exclusively on their “uniformity.”20 In contrast, he had moved to a different position by 1925, in “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art,’” in which he declared that modernity does not need an artist who copies the form of the machine, since the job should be left to the engineer who, by understanding the requirements of its smooth functioning, will create the most beautiful form simply as a by-product of striving for maximum efficiency: “We maintain that the more perfect the machine is, the more beautiful.”21 This view is compatible with Neurath’s critique of aesthetic formalism, i.e. a naïve copying of 17  See Otto Neurath, “Das neue Bauhaus in Dessau”, in: Der Aufbau: Ősterreichische Monatshefte fur Siedlung und Stadtebau, 1, 1926, p. 49. 18  Josef Frank, “Frippery of the Soul and Frippery as a Problem”, in: Schriften/Writings, op. cit., p. 293. 19  Ibid., pp. 297, 299. 20  Karel Teige, “Toward a New Architecture”, in: Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 309. 21  Karel Teige, “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’”, in: Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 333. (Italics in the original.)

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the outward form of modern machinery. On the other hand, it would hardly have been acceptable to Neurath’s friend Frank, as Teige went on to say that beautiful utilitarian objects could be produced “without any aesthetic considerations.”22 It appears that Teige underestimated the symbolic dimension of design, which Frank made the topic of his major study, Architektur als Symbol: Elemente deutschen neuen Bauens (1931).23 Compared with Frank, a sophisticated seeker of meaning, Teige turns out to be a radical reductivist. Yet I believe the matter is more complex than that. It is not that Teige was blind to the symbolic aspect of architecture; rather, he was suspicious of it. Consistent with his Marxist outlook, he generally considered the symbolic as ideological, i.e. dedicated to portraying the class system as essentially harmonious and timeless, instead of conflict-ridden and transitory. Traditional architecture with an impressive Classical, Gothic or Baroque façade awes the ordinary man into submission and acceptance of the hierarchical social order. The recycling of these historic styles in the architecture of the nineteenth century was calculated to lend a sense of dignity and permanence to the new capitalist institutions clothed in them — parliaments, banks and factories. Modern architecture, in contrast, reduced or eliminated ornament, thus outgrowing the limits of the capitalist order - hence the big disappointment experienced by Teige, after he inspected the 1928 project of his guru, Le Corbusier, called “Mundaneum:” an international city of world culture, which should have included a university, a museum, a library and a public assembly, to be built under the auspices of the League of Nations near Geneva. What in particular shocked Teige was that the project reused the forms of ancient “metaphysical architecture”24 — Babylonian, Assyrian, and Aztec. These forms, suitable for sites of extinct religious cults, are out of place in modern society. Indeed, the whole idea of Mundaneum is an “illusion, a vain wish, a utopia,”25 “the expression of ideological and metaphysical imagination.”26 Teige eventually accuses Le Corbusier of the “error of monumentality,” drawing a contrast between “architecture as art,” or “monumental architecture,” and “instrumental architecture.” In a celebrated slogan, he proclaims that “instead of monuments, architecture creates instruments.”27 However, Teige does not yet emphasize, in “Mundaneum”, the dominating aspect of monumental architecture. He comes to develop this in “Toward a Sociology of Architecture” and it eventually becomes the central, critical point of The Minimum Dwelling (1932), in which Teige states, “The fact that monumentality is

 Ibid., p. 340.  Vienna: Verlag Anton Schroll & Co. Translated as Architecture as Symbol: Elements of the German New Building in: Josef Frank, Schriften/Writings, Vol. 2, op. cit., pp. 9–191. 24  Karel Teige, “Mundaneum”, in: Stavba 7, 10, 1929, 145–155. Quoted from the English translation by Ladislav and Elizabeth Holovsky and Lubomír Doležel, “Mundaneum”, in: K. Michael Hays (ed.), Oppositions Reader. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press 1998, p. 594. 25  Ibid. 26  Ibid., p. 596. 27  Ibid., p. 597. (Italics in the original.) 22 23

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i­ntrinsically an asocial phenomenon, that it is an expression of exploitation, makes it essential to break with this tradition once and for all.”28 Teige’s critique of the Mundaneum project is of intrinsic interest as an early example of the ideological critique (Ideologiekritik) of architecture. However, it is also relevant in the present context, because Neurath was invited to participate in the project by its author, the Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet. It is interesting that Neurath did not view Mundaneum as negatively as Teige: rather than an irrelevant utopia, he saw it as a potential vehicle for communicating information through the system of graphic representation that he was developing.29 However, whilst he was somewhat more appreciative of Otlet’s idea of a global museum, he was every bit as critical as Teige of the formalism and elitism of Le Corbusier’s design. At any rate, the project fell through.30 Provided that the architecture of the future is supposed to be a non-monumental, instrumental architecture, how does Teige actually imagine it will look? Despite his orthodox Marxist distrust of utopian blueprints, we nevertheless get a rough answer in The Minimum Dwelling (1932), by means of a detailed critical analysis of the interwar efforts to solve the housing crisis by finding a viable model of affordable small apartment.31 Teige finds all these efforts lacking. In partial contrast with his view of the 1920s, when he believed that the shape of modern buildings would be determined by science and technology, he now believes the determining forces are primarily social and psychological. We thus need to concentrate on the social-­ psychological transformations that are already taking place under capitalism and that will be completed upon transition to the classless society, the most important of which is the imminent elimination of the nuclear family. This will involve liberating the wife from household chores and socializing the upbringing of children—as we already see happening, according to Teige, as women are joining the workforce and children are spending more time in crèches and schools. Thus he accuses Western European architects of a lack of vision as most of them aim at nothing more than accommodating low-income families, as if the traditional institution of the family was not already falling apart. For example, Otto Neurath and Josef Frank, with their  Originally published as: Nejmenší byt. Praha: Petr 1932. Quoted from the English translation by Eric Dluhosh in: Karel Teige, The Minimum Dwelling. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 2002, p. 24. 29  The Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics, in 1935 renamed the International System of Typographic Picture Education, or ISOTYPE. See Otto Neurath, International Picture Language. Reading: University of Reading, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication 1980 (1935). Cf. Michael Twyman, “The Significance of Isotype”, in: Graphic Communication through ISOTYPE. Reading: University of Reading 1975. For the relevance of ISOTYPE in Neurath’s work on architecture, see Blau, op. cit. 30  See Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis, op. cit., p. 102–103. 31  The call for a “minimum dwelling” was issued by the Second CIAM Congress in Frankfurt in 1929. Teige’s book is a response to this as well as to the debate at the Third CIAM Congress in Brussels in 1930, in which he participated. Cf. Eric Dluhosch, “Teige’s Minimum Dwelling as a Critique of Modern Architecture” in: Dluhosch and Švácha, Karel Teige: 1900–1951, op. cit., pp. 141–193. 28

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vision of cozy terraced houses, complete with settlement gardens, would be hopelessly middle-class for Teige, as would the whole idea of guild socialism connected with the settlement movement. Teige did not actually analyze the Viennese Gartensiedlungen in The Minimum Dwelling, but what he wrote about the social democrat-preferred Gemeindebauten easily applies to the former as well. Despite Neurath’s assurance that “[t]he architect more than any other creative person must seek to anticipate the future,”32 Teige would not find the cheap single-family terraced houses any more socially transformative than the high-rise social housing model which eventually prevailed in Vienna. Any kind of nuclear family dwellings, however reduced, “are in fact no more and no less than petit bourgeois apartments, whose features have been reduced to an absolute minimum.”33 They are “a material expression of the ruling ideology and its social organization: the monogamous family, the inferior economic and social status of women, parental rights over children, and so on.”34 Teige finds more foresight in some Soviet architects who offered designs for genuinely collective housing.35 In such collective housing, the service segments of the traditional house are totally collectivized — a canteen instead of private kitchen; a social club instead of a sitting room; children raised in collective facilities. The actual dwelling reduces to a living cell for each individual adult person. To be more exact: every citizen of 17 years of age, of either sex, is entitled to one living cell in a socialist building. the cohabitation of a couple in a single cell is emphatically ruled out of question. not only the marital bedroom, but also the “marital home” as such is eliminated. couples can reserve two neighboring living cells.36

This future form of dwelling is, according to Teige’s Hegelian view, a higher synthesis of the crudely communal dwelling of the primitive society, which provided no space for the individual, with the individualist dwelling of the capitalist society, which privatized even communal activities. Whilst the communist dwelling constitutes a return to the past, antedating the class society by placing communal activities in communally accessible structures, it actually trumps the individualism of the capitalist period by guaranteeing for every adult a private room, which was then a privilege of the minority.37 On the other hand, whether these structures will be high-­rise or low-rise is an open question. Again, Teige does not want to prophesy the future, but something can be inferred from the fact that the future dwelling will  Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, op. cit., p. 257.  Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., p. 94. 34  Ibid., p. 168. (Bold in the original.) 35  One of the leading Soviet promoters of collective dwelling is the architect Moisei Ginzburg; Teige discusses his and others’ designs in The Minimum Dwelling. For a recent discussion of the Soviet debate on collective dwelling, see Barbara Kreis, “The Idea of the Dom-Kommuna and the Dilemma of the Soviet Avant-Garde,” in: Oppositions 21, 1980, pp. 52–77. 36  Teige, “K sociologii architektury”, op. cit., p. 217. (Teige’s lower-case typographic convention; my translation.) 37  “the standardized cell makes the idea of private dwelling a concrete reality” (loc. cit.; my translation). 32 33

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be highly collectivized. The residential buildings of the future are bound to be “mega-­houses, that is […] considerably larger than present rental houses, for the simple reason that their collective facilities will be economically viable only if they are designed to serve a relatively high number of people living in these collectives.”38 I am sure Josef Frank, for one, would find Teige’s proposal hopelessly utopian, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary. (Teige keeps repeating that “everything that will be already exists in an embryonic state”39 in the present). In Architecture as a Symbol, he offers a quip on the idea of minimum dwelling that easily applies to Teige: No one today wants to see that the whole world is anxious to structure life as pleasantly as possible, and cars and ships, therefore, are made to approximate the house as much as possible, while German architecture endeavors to do it backwards by matching dwellings to sleeper cabins in which one can sleep for a night in a pinch.40

Yet Teige’s vision cannot be dismissed as simply ludicrous, because it can be demonstrated that it derives from the same source as the ideas of his contemporaries—Neurath, Frank and Meyer. All these thinkers offer some version of the claim that modern architecture is somehow less artistic or decorative, or completely ceases to be an art, compared to the architecture of the past. We know from where this claim came—viz., the influential writings of the Moravian-born Viennese founder of modern design, Adolf Loos.41 In addition to his innovative design, Loos became notorious for his 1909 article, “Ornament and Crime,” which called for the elimination of ornament both from modern houses and other utilitarian objects (such as clothes). According to Loos, ornamentation is like tattooing, which is prevalent among undeveloped peoples (“the Papuans”) but confined to criminals and the feeble-minded in modern society.42 Loos continues this argument in a later article, “Architecture” (1910), in which he compares the house (das Haus) with the work of art, reaching the conclusion: Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included amongst the arts? That is so. Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art:

 Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., p. 301. (Bold in the original.)  Ibid., p. 13. 40  Josef Frank, Architecture as Symbol, in: Frank, Schriften/Writings, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 131. 41  I should caution that by restricting my attention to Loos as a common source for Frank, Neurath, Meyer and Teige, I do not mean to ignore the diversity of sources of the modern architecture movement and its theory in the early twentieth century. Some of these other sources, including the late nineteenth-century American modern architecture (Louis Sullivan), German expressionism, and the Russian avant-garde, each of which shaped the theory and practice of the Bauhaus, are analyzed by Volker Thurm-Nemeth in his “Die Konstruktion des modernen Lebens – Ein Fragment: Wiener Kreis und Architektur,“in Idem (Ed.), Konstruktion zwischen Werkbund und Bauhaus. Wissenschaft – Architektur – Wiener Kreis. Schriftenreihe Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung und Kunst, Vol. 4, Vienna: Hőlder–Pichler–Tempsky 1998, pp. 9–78. 42  Adolf Loos, “Ornament und Verbrechen” (1909), in: Loos, Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Adolf Opel. Vienna: Lesethek Verlag 2010, pp. 363–373. 38 39

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the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfills a function is to be excluded from the domain of art.43

Loos appears to drive a wedge between art and architecture, reconceiving architecture as a strictly practical endeavor. Given this, it seems only natural that he has often been interpreted as an apostle of the incoming anti-art functionalism and an architectural counterpart of the logical empiricist project of cutting through the metaphysical nonsense and keeping only the empirically verifiable. This interpretation possibly does not do justice to the complexity of his views.44 However, rather than examining the correctness of this reading and uncovering the authentic Loos under the layers of interpretation, I only wish to record here how he variously influenced our protagonists. Of the four thinkers whose ideas have been examined here more closely, Neurath and Frank knew Loos personally from the Viennese settlement movement, in which the latter participated as both administrator and designer between 1919 and 1924. He became chief architect in 1921 and head of the Settlement Bureau in 1923, while Neurath managed a research center. Loos, Neurath and Frank shared the vision of unadorned low-rise, high-density terraced houses complete with vegetable gardens. He himself executed several dozen such simple homes during this period. In 1921, Loos built the model settlement “am Heuberg,” which was highly regarded by Neurath. However, he had a mixed view of Loos’ opinions, considering them rather snobby45; and yet Neurath’s own writings betray Loos’ influence; e.g., when he observes, in Personal Life and Class Struggle: “The more precisely the function is defined, the less ‘artistic’ freedom remains for the builder.”46 In other words, as soon as the house is viewed as a machine for living, it need be designed to fulfill its function, rather than artistically. As for Josef Frank, his whole idea, which we encountered earlier, of a contrast between the unassuming exterior of the house, and the interior into which we should not be afraid to bring even antique furniture, derives from the distinction between public and private, which is one of the essential contrasts employed by Loos in “Architecture.” As for Hannes Meyer, his familiarity with Loos is obvious from another passage in “Über marxistische Architektur,” in which traditional architecture is condemned in no uncertain terms: like the medicine man tattoos the body of the savage, so does the architect tattoo the body of the house—that result of economic, technological and biological laws—by the ornament of window frames and planar rhythms, as well as by the mimicry of color. even today, the

 Adolf Loos, “Architektur” (1910), in: Loos, Gesammelte Schriften, op. cit., pp. 391–404. Quoted from the English translation by Wilfried Wang in Yehuda Safran (Ed.), The Architecture of Adolf Loos: An Arts Council Exhibition, second ed. London: Arts Council of Great Britain 1987, p. 108. 44  For example, one recent interpreter argues that Loos limited to domestic architecture the scope of his claim that architecture was not art, as indicated by his consistent use of the term “das Haus” (rather than “der Bau”) in his essay. (See Joseph Masheck, Adolf Loos: The Art of Architecture. London – New York: I. B. Tauris 2013.) 45  Cf. Vossoughian, Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis, op. cit., p. 32. 46  Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, op. cit., p. 257. 43

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building still serves the architect as a means of expressing his private feelings (persönlichen gefühlskomplexe).47

In effect, Meyer connects the argument of “Ornament and Crime” with that of “Architecture,” by suggesting that architectural ornament is as unacceptable as tattooing and that ornament turns architecture into a private object. Presumably, architecture is public, so that ornament must go. (Similar to Frank, Meyer employs the Loosian contrast between public and private in order to distinguish architecture from art.) Teige, for his part, dedicated to Loos a chapter in his Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, interpreting him as a theorist as well as a practicing architect, especially instrumental in initiating the modern movement in his homeland.48 Teige also reads Loos’ argument in the “Architecture” article as meaning that “architecture is not art,”49 and should be left, accordingly, to engineers and other technicians. The tomb and the monument are two exceptions from the rule, presumably because these “abstract architectures, are not really a part of architecture at all but rather a pure, absolute, even nonfigurative sculpture.”50 (As a true modernist, he goes on to suggest that both of these will “disappear with the popular acceptance of cremation (urns will replace tombs) and with the disappearance of the religious and totemic, that is, atavistic sentimentality from human attitudes toward the deceased.”51) It is clear that even Teige’s later distinction between monumental and instrumental architecture is ultimately derived from the Loosian contrast between art and architecture. Monumental architecture is ornamental architecture, which itself is an architecture intended to impress and thus to deceive by its external appearance. By contrast, non-monumental, instrumental architecture is not necessarily small-­ scale—what with Teige’s “mega-houses” of the communist future. Rather, it is an architecture stripped of ideology.52

 Meyer, “Über marxistische Architektur,” op. cit., p. 93 (my translation).  When it comes to the influence of Loos’ ideas in Czechoslovakia, it is worth mentioning that Czech was the first foreign language into which Loos’ first collection of essays, Spoken into the Void (Ins Leere Gesprochen) (1921) was translated (in 1929). 49  Karel Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 129. 50  Ibid. 51  Ibid., p. 129–130. 52  I chose to emphasize Teige’s appreciative attitude to Loos as a precursor of radical architectural modernism. For the sake of completeness, I should add that Teige was at the same time highly critical of Loos—in particular of the latter’s architectural practice. Both in Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and The Minimum Dwelling, Teige said that Loos was by and large a bourgeois architect who designed expensive villas for the rich and, despite his theoretical dismissal of useless ornament, preferred very costly materials in his highly decorative interiors. 47 48

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6.2  Science, Metaphysics and Ideology At least one recent commentator—the German architectural historian Simone Hain—has already suggested that Teige not only held some ideas on architecture that resembled those of some members of the Vienna Circle, but that as a matter of fact he “accepted the scientific view of the world propagated by the Vienna Circle.”53 Hain’s thesis was flatly rejected by the foremost expert on Teige, the Czech historian of modern architecture Rostislav Švácha, who wrote: “Simone Hain hypothesizes that […] Karel Teige reached the position of Carnap’s and Schlick’s logical positivism; yet such a connection was never mentioned in his writings, and it is furthermore doubtful that as a committed Marxist he would have been inclined to take such a stance.”54 I have commented on this dispute before.55 In my view, Hain’s paper is sloppy; in particular, she provides virtually no support for her thesis. Moreover, she is not even entirely clear on what her thesis really is. I have quoted her above as saying that Teige “accepted” the views of the Vienna Circle; yet elsewhere she speaks of a “remarkable affinity”56 between the Czech author and the Viennese thinkers. I think these are two different claims. The former implies that Teige adopted a pre-existing doctrine, whilst the latter suggests a more radical—indeed, fantastical—notion that Teige held a doctrine similar to, or overlapping with, logical empiricism, which he had apparently developed on his own. Thus to a large extent I agree with Švácha’s dismissal of Hain’s thesis. On the other hand, Hain simply made an attempt, however ill-executed, to integrate Teige’s achievement into a larger story of Western modernity. East and Western European modernisms need to be connected (or, rather, re-connected). As to Švácha’s criticism of Hain’s claim about Teige’s “logical positivism”—it could hardly be more positivistic! His argument comes down to saying, “There are no occurrences of the words “Carnap,” “Schlick” or “logical empiricism” (or “logical positivism”) in Teige’s papers; therefore he is not a logical empiricist.” Yet surely he leaps to this conclusion. Even thinkers with no knowledge of each other’s ideas—indeed, no knowledge of each other’s existence—can, and often do, enjoy mutual affinity due to sharing their intellectual background, influences and commitments. Teige and Neurath shared a belief in Marxism seen as a strictly scientific sociology. Far from being a barrier between them, as wrongly assumed by Švácha, this view of Marxism was, in fact, their common ground.

 Simone Hain, “Karel in Wonderland: The Theoretical Conflicts of the Thirties”, in: Manuela Castagnara Codeluppi (Ed.), Karel Teige: Architettura, Poesia, Praga 1900–1951. Milano: Electa 1996, p. 311 (my emphasis). 54  Rostislav Švácha, “Before and After the Mundaneum”, in: Dluhosch and Švácha, Karel Teige 1900–1951, op cit., p. 111. 55  Tomáš Hříbek, “Karel Teige and the ‘wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung’”, in: Umění/Art, 53, 4, 2005, pp. 366–384. I reuse some of the material from this earlier paper in this and the following sections of this chapter. 56  Hain, “Karel in Wonderland”, op. cit., p. 312. 53

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There is, indeed, a remarkable similarity between Neurath’s logical empiricist theory of science and Teige’s notion, “scientific sociology,” enabled by their shared commitment to Marxism. Logical empiricists saw their task as twofold: it was destructive, debunking the pretense of metaphysics that it could serve as an alternative source of knowledge; and constructive, demonstrating the unity of science. Neurath is usually credited mainly with contributing to the program of unified science—to which I shall return momentarily—but one specific element of his critique of metaphysics should not be passed over as it proves particularly important in comparing Neurath with Teige. Whilst it is neglected in textbook surveys of logical empiricism, the critique of metaphysics comes in at least two varieties. Textbooks usually mention the intellectualist variety  - metaphysics as a logical or semantic aberration, an error due to a misunderstanding of language, an error which can be rectified by adopting a correct theory. The correct theory is that meaningful discourse is either synthetic a posteriori, or a priori, but analytic; everything else must be dismissed, as Neurath put it, as so much “verbal clutter”.57 This expression proves that the intellectualist criticism of metaphysics can be found in his own writings. However, we should not overlook his alternative strategy, namely an attempt to condemn metaphysics by exposing its socio-economic roots. It was no doubt Neurath who was responsible for having this sort of criticism of metaphysics represented in the manifesto of the Vienna Circle alongside the familiar logical-linguistic version: The increase of metaphysical and theologizing leanings, which shows itself today in many associations and sects, in books and journals, in talks and university lectures, seems to be based on the fierce social and economic struggles of the present: one group of combatants, holding fast to traditional social forms, cultivates traditional attitudes of metaphysics and theology whose content has long since been superseded; while the other group […] faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical science. This development is connected with that of the modern process of production, which is becoming ever more rigorously mechanized and leaves ever less room for metaphysical ideas. It is also connected with the disappointment of broad masses of people with the attitude of those who preach traditional metaphysical and theological doctrines.58

The rejection of metaphysics stated in this passage is different, though not necessarily opposed to, the standard logical empiricist criticism on logical grounds. The alternative view suggests that metaphysics and empirical science, in addition to

57  Otto Neurath, “Unified Science and Psychology” (1932), in: Brian McGuiness (Ed.), Unified Science. Introduced by Rainer Hegselmann, translated by Hans Kaal. Dordrecht: Reidel 1987, p. 4. 58  Hans Hahn, Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle”, in: Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology. Dordrecht: Reidel 1973, p.  317. Although I am emphasizing here the role of Neurath’s Marxist sociology in the manifesto of the Vienna Circle, I do not mean to diminish the important contribution of Carnap’s to the composition of the text, which was convincingly established by Thomas Uebel. See Uebel’s “On the Production History and Early Reception of The Scientific World Conception. The Vienna Circle”, in: Friedrich Stadler and Thomas Uebel (Eds.): Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, Hrsg. Vom Verein Ernst Mach. Reprint der Erstausgabe. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis. Sonderband, Wien and New York: Springer 2012, p. 291–314.

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having (or lacking) cognitive contents, express the worldviews of two social groups in conflict—the presumably still dominant conservative group, and “the broad masses of people”, respectively. The alternative notion of metaphysics as socially determined implies that a mere logical criticism might not suffice: though by no means useless, the logical analysis of language alone may not eliminate metaphysics as long as the conservative social group that uses metaphysical nonsense in order to legitimate its class domination holds onto its economic power. On the other hand, the mention of the ongoing “mechanization” of the “modern process of production” suggests that the coming industrial-scientific era is favorable to the scientific world-­ view despite the wishes of the entrenched conservatives, so that the spontaneous development of economic forces themselves will eventually bring about the downfall of metaphysics. It should be clear that the alternative criticism of metaphysics found in the Vienna Circle manifesto is derived from the Marxist theory of ideology. For Karl Marx, ideology, comprising the political, legal, religious and philosophical ideas of a dominant social class, involves an essentially false picture of the class system as fair and harmonious. The function of this false picture is to consolidate economic power. In the Vienna Circle manifesto and other texts, Neurath seems to use the term “metaphysics” as, by and large, a euphemism for “ideology”.59 The major point of agreement between Neurath and Marx on the subject of ideology is their resolutely functionalist approach—instead of taking ideology at face value, they debunk it as subservient to the interests of a dominant class. The one substantial modification is Neurath’s notion that ideology, in as much as it consists of metaphysical pseudo-­ statements, is literally meaningless.60

 To be sure, not everybody in the Vienna Circle was excited by Neurath’s radical politics. Moritz Schlick, in particular, opposed attempts to transform logical empiricism into a “movement” with a left-wing political agenda. See Friedrich Stadler, “Otto Neurath and Moritz Schlick: On the Philosophical and Political Antagonisms in the Vienna Circle”, in: Thomas Uebel (Ed.), Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle. Dordrecht: Reidel 1991, pp. 153–175, esp. p. 159–168. On the other hand, Neurath found a kindred spirit in Carnap, as evidenced in the latter’s “Intellectual Autobiography”: “One of the important contributions made by Neurath consisted in his frequent remarks on the social and historical conditions for the development of philosophical conceptions. He criticized strongly the customary view held among others by Schlick and by Russell, that a wide-spread acceptance of a philosophical doctrine depends chiefly on its truth. He emphasized that the sociological situation in a given culture and in a given historical period is favorable to certain kinds of ideology or philosophical attitude and unfavorable to others.” P. A. Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court 1963, p. 22. 60  Incidentally, whilst the suggestion that ideology is literally meaningless perhaps lends it an extra polemical edge, it appears much less plausible than the orthodox Marxist concept of a distorted picture of the world. While the picture is distorted, it is still a picture, hence it cannot completely lack a cognitive value. Also, the class analysis implied by the text of the Vienna Circle manifesto, in which vaguely identified reactionary forces are opposed by the supporters of modern industrialism, seems less precise than the Marxist model of bourgeoisie vs. proletariat. Those on the side of industrialism and science could include progressive entrepreneurs. This might have been a concession to the non-Marxist signatories of the manifesto; Neurath himself is more orthodox in his own publications. 59

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Let us now look at the positive task of the logical empiricist theory of science, namely the program of demonstrating the conceptual unity of all scientific knowledge across all its disciplines. This was the project of “unified science,” which was largely Neurath’s idea. Carnap defined “science” as “the totality of accepted sentences; and this includes not only the assertions of the scientists but also those of everyday life”.61 In keeping with the aforementioned critique of metaphysics, there is no room in this view of science for meaningful philosophical propositions. Indeed, Carnap maintains that “everything that can be said about things is said by science”.62 Even so, this still leaves room for transforming philosophy into a logic of science, whose object will not be “things”, but rather “science itself as an ordered complex of sentences”.63 Carnap envisioned that such a logic of science would investigate issues such as the internal coherence of particular scientific theories; the logical status of statements of law; the relationships between observation and theoretical terms; reduction of higher-order to more basic theories; the status of statements expressing probability, etc.—i.e., the issues that have since become the standard stock of the philosophy of science. However, unlike in contemporary philosophy of science, in which such issues are usually studied in a piecemeal fashion, logical empiricists were driven by the vision of achieving unified science. For this, the logic of science was to supply a basic vocabulary—a “universal slang”, as Neurath called it.64 As is well known, Carnap originally believed that the basic vocabulary could be phenomenalistic, but Neurath eventually convinced him of the superiority of physicalism as reference to public objects has an advantage over the subjectivity of private phenomena. Neurath’s idea of the unified science program has two specific features. For one thing, whilst most members of the Circle were physicists or mathematicians and logicians (by education, if not by occupation), Neurath was an economist and sociologist and thus was mostly interested in the possibility of integrating social disciplines in a physicalistically unified science. He came to believe that in fact Marxism was already a physicalistic sociology, or with only a little effort it could be turned into one. In Personal Life and Class Struggle (1928), he says: The cultivation of scientific, unmetaphysical thought, its application above all to social occurrences, is quite Marxist. Religious men and nationalists appeal to some feeling, they fight for entities that live beyond mankind. To them the state is something “higher”, something “holy”, whereas for Marxists everything lies in the same earthly plane.65

Furthermore, in his major treatise on the empiricist foundations of social science, Empirical Sociology (1931), Neurath went on to explicitly claim that “Of all the

61  Rudolf Carnap, “The Task of the Logic of Science”, in: McGuiness, Unified Science, op. cit., p. 46. 62  Ibid., p. 47. 63  Loc. cit. 64  Neurath, “Unified Science and Psychology”, op. cit., p. 10. 65  Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, op. cit., p. 295.

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attempts at creating a strictly scientific unmetaphysical physicalist sociology, Marxism is the most complete.”66 It might be objected that Neurath is missing that, from the point of view of logical empiricism, Marxism is hardly acceptable due to its materialism, which must be dismissed as so much unverifiable nonsense. Such was, indeed, Carnap’s opinion on the matter. However, Carnap also reports that Neurath eventually convinced him that metaphysical materialism, though philosophically unacceptable, had in the past been an expression of the same scientific attitude that more recently had come to be better conveyed by logical empiricism.67 Neurath also suggested that Marxist materialism amounted to no more than general empiricism and behaviorism. Thus, in Empirical Sociology (1931), he maintains that “Marx and Engels are ‘materialists’ insofar as they speak only of what one can observe by means of the senses,” and further illustrates this point by claiming that, for example, the Marxist theory of the state would be nothing but “the theory of soldiers, judges, citizens, peasants, etc. with their telephones, streets, houses, prisons, law-books, etc.”68 By limiting its language to the names of such “medium-sized dry goods” and their properties, Marxism is allegedly free of any dubious metaphysical foundations, materialist or otherwise. Neurath concludes that Marxism is part of “behavioristics”, i.e., a large segment of unified science which includes individual behaviorist psychology alongside Marxism understood as “social behavioristics.”69 At any rate, the fact that at least one prominent member of the Vienna Circle was a committed Marxist, and yet saw no contradiction between Marxism and logical empiricism, exposes as inadequate Švácha’s response to Hain based on an alleged incompatibility between the two doctrines. Now let us see if we can find in Teige any doctrinal overlap with logical empiricism, as Hain claims we can. She cites the following passage from Teige’s “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’” which does indeed sound as if taken straight from the Vienna Circle manifesto: Our era is the era of science and technology. First it has, sometimes rather rudely, chased religion out of its studies. Consistently and sincerely it has renounced all mysticism. Fired by an ideal, it has declared itself materialist, with all the consequences. It has gamely waved the banner of positivism. This is the time of experiments. We have no more confidence in religion; we have confidence in science.70  Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, op. cit., p. 349.  See Carnap’s “Intellectual Autobiography”, in: Schilpp, op. cit., p. 24. 68  Otto Neurath, “Weltanschauung und Marxismus” (1931), in: Neurath, Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische Schriften, Vol. 1. Edited by Rudolf Haller and Heiner Rutte. Vienna: Hőlder – Pichler – Tempsky 1981, p. 410–411. (My translation.) 69  Neurath, “Unified Science and Psychology”, op. cit., esp. p.  11–16. In “Weltanschauung und Marxismus,” Neurath contends that behaviorism is an ideologically neutral scientific trend, pursued both in the Soviet Union and the United States. In Empirical Sociology, he marshals a lengthy quote from Marx and Engels’ German Ideology as evidence for his interpretation of Marxism as a science that explains social phenomena in terms of publicly observable movements vis-à-vis publicly observable objects. 70  Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings, p. 337. 66 67

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This one—and, to my knowledge, only—passage in all of Teige’s oeuvre which features the term “positivism” is sufficient for Hain to claim that the Czech critic combined Marxist materialism with “a consistent logical empiricism.”71 Her claim is peculiar for a number of reasons, but mainly for its implication that Teige supposedly was already a logical empiricist in 1925, a year in which the meetings of the Vienna Circle had barely begun. This temporal discrepancy alone should be enough to show that “positivism” could not, for Teige in 1925, mean “logical empiricism.” In the 1920s, the term “positivism” had been common currency among the educated classes of the young Czechoslovak Republic, in which various offshoots of Comtean positivism had become an official philosophy with an important nation-building role. In contrast to the old Habsburg Empire, perceived as seeking religious sanction and involving a rigid social hierarchy, Czech positivists helped identify the new state with the values of secularism, democracy and social progress. Hence, these general values were more likely to be associated with the term “positivism” in the mind of a typical early twentieth-century Czech intellectual than any specific epistemological doctrine.72 Apart from this widest meaning of “positivism,” it is also worth taking into account the use of the term in the architectural discourse that by decades precedes Teige’s paper. For example, the German architect Albert Hofmann writes already in 1893 of the transformation of architecture into a branch of technology, under pressure from the “positivism of science.”73 Hofmann’s paper was a contribution to the late nineteenth-century controversy regarding the aesthetic merit of industrial architecture. Evidently, Hofmann’s understanding of “positivism” is as traditional as Teige’s - a belief in the cognitive supremacy of science. It is not known whether Teige read Hofmann’s paper. However, he was most likely to have been familiar with the writings of Hofmann’s German successors, the theorists of modern architecture such as Adolf Behne, Siegfried Giedion and Bruno Taut, who express a similar pro-scientific attitude.

 Hain, “Karel in Wonderland,” op. cit., p. 312.  For a critical discussion of interwar Czech positivism, see Miloš Kratochvílo’s contribution in this volume. I think it is also worth mentioning Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s role in popularizing, specifically in the Czech milieu, an interpretation of Marxism as a positive social science. Masaryk‘s detailed two-volume treatise, Otázka sociální: Základy marxismu filosofické a sociologické (Prague: Jan Laichter 1898; the German version published as Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus. Studien zur socialen Frage. Wien: C. Konegen 1899) became the essential textbook of Marxism for several generations of Czech intellectuals, Marxist and anti-Marxist alike. It is safe to say that Masaryk’s positivist slant on Marxism very likely influenced even the young Teige. (In defense of both Masaryk and Teige’s positivist reading of Marxism, it should be noted that the “humanist” manuscripts of the young Marx did not become available until the early 1930s.) 73  Albert Hofmann, “Die Künstlerischen Beziehungen der Architektur zur Ingenieur-Wissenschaft,” in: Deutsche Bauzeitung 27, 1893, cited in Sokratis Georgiadis, “Introduction” to Siegfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete. Translated by J. Duncan Barry. Santa Monica, Cal.: The Getty Research Institute 1995, p. 21. 71 72

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The second apparent doctrinal overlap is suggested by Teige’s rejection of “a priori aesthetics,”74 which seems to resemble the logical empiricist dismissal of synthetic a priori propositions. However, Teige’s rejection of an “aprioristic aesthetic” has little in common with delimiting the range of admissible propositions. Alternative names for what he rejects include “the idealist aesthetic,”75 “the German Inhaltsästhetik,”76 “art history,”77 and “academicism.”78 He has in mind the academic Kunstwissenschaft as it originated from Hegel’s philosophy of art. Hegel saw the history of art in terms of a succession of styles understood as progressive unveilings of the Geist. Each stage in the history of culture, including its art and architecture, is determined by a particular phase in the development of the Spirit. It was left to academic art history, which came into existence in the late 1800s in Central Europe, to fill Hegel’s basic schema with empirical detail.79 It is important to see what exactly it is that Teige finds objectionable in this tradition. He is more of an orthodox Marxist than, say, Neurath, in that he shares with Hegel a belief in an intelligible pattern discernible in history—even though this pattern is not supposed to be that of the Spirit coming to self-consciousness. Teige’s Hegelianism is most noticeable in his idea of triadic development from the thesis of a primitive undifferentiated dwelling of the pre-class society, through the antithesis of a differentiated dwelling of the class society, to the synthesis of an undifferentiated proletarian abode.80 (I shall return to this later, in section three.) What Teige opposes in the idealist aesthetic is, rather, its basic approach to works of architecture as bearers of aesthetic qualities, as determined by changing styles of decoration.81 Furthermore, he seems to suggest that the idealist aesthetic of architecture is not just a passive reflection of architectural practice, but that it actively engenders a particular type of architecture—i.e., architecture that emphasizes style over structure and function. Rather, he is concerned with liberating architecture from the constraints of aesthetic norms and rules that do not have any functional justification. Apparently, Teige has in mind the kinds of rules laid down by the likes of Vitruvius, Palladio and others for building both sacred and residential architecture, particularly the rules stating precise  Teige, “The Mundaneum”, op. cit., p. 596.  Teige, “Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia”, op. cit., p. 289. 76  Teige, “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’”, op. cit., p. 335. 77  Teige, “K sociologii architektury”, op. cit., p. 164, and Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., p. 22. 78  Teige, “K sociologii architektury”, op. cit., p. 169 and passim. 79  For the best-known empiricist criticism of the Hegelian heritage of traditional art history, see E.  H. Gombrich, “In Search of Cultural History”, in: Ideals and Idols. London: Phaidon 1979, pp. 24–59. 80  Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., p. 13–16. 81  It is worth noting that Teige sees as his enemy a theory that has the same roots as the philosophy of science opposed by logical empiricists. Whilst he rejects the philosophy behind the Hegelian Kunstwissenschaft, logical empiricists identified themselves, as I pointed out, as being against Kantian transcendentalism. Thus, the dominant philosophies in both the humanities and the natural sciences—at least in the German-speaking cultural milieu — that needed to be overthrown had a similar ancestry, namely German idealism. 74 75

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n­ umerical proportions and the positions of rooms, doors, windows and overall masses of a building. These proportions were ultimately derived from the arithmetical speculations of Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy pertaining to transcendent harmonies underlying unruly empirical phenomena.82 This, then, is what Teige means by the “a priori aesthetic” which was replaced by the modern notion of architecture as a functionally conceived space. Whilst Teige’s opposition to the aprioristic approach to building is clearly on a different plane from the logical empiricist concern with the language of unified science, the two views perhaps share this: logical empiricists wish to shake the constraints imposed on science by the supposedly necessary truths of Newtonian mechanics; and Teige tries to free architecture from rules ultimately prescribed by an arm-chair metaphysics. Thirdly, recall how Neurath contrasted social science with ideology/metaphysics. It appears that Teige works with a similar contrast between science and ideology; he speaks alternately of “the constructivist aesthetic,”83 “constructivism,”84 “functionalism”85 and “scientism”86 as a counterpart to “the idealist aesthetic,” “academicism,” etc. The two thinkers also pretty much agree on what they mean here by “science”, i.e. Marxist sociology—or perhaps a total, Marxist science of society, including Marxist economics, understood as an empirical discipline. Thus it looks as if there is a considerable doctrinal overlap. However, we should not be misled by these surface similarities. Remember that Neurath sees science, including Marxism, as a collection of meaningful statements, to be distinguished from ideology, interpreted as verbal nonsense. That is, there is no assumption on Neurath’s part that science is a true description of reality whilst ideology is a false description of that same reality. In making such an assumption, one would be appealing to the relationship between reality and its representation, which is nothing but that good ol’ metaphysics that was to be gotten rid of in the first place. Yet this is the very metaphysical picture that is operative in Teige’s contrast between science and ideology. In accordance with classical Marxism, Teige assumes that there is a social reality that can be described either truthfully by Marxist science, or falsely by bourgeois ideology. The fact that Teige assumes the metaphysical relation between representation and reality is, perhaps, the deepest point of contrast between his thought and logical empiricism. Fourthly, and finally, think again of Teige’s rejection of Le Corbusier’s “metaphysical architecture.”87 It would be a mistake to suppose that Teige means by  For a classical study of the Platonic background of Renaissance architecture, see Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. New York: W.W. Norton 1971. 83  Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 289. 84  Teige, “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’”, op. cit., passim. 85  Ibid., p. 335; and Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., passim. Rostislav Švácha argues that “constructivism” and “functionalism,” rather than being interchangeable labels, correspond to two successive periods of Teige’s theorizing: namely, the doctrinaire materialism of the 1920s and the more relaxed position of the 1930s, respectively. See Švácha, “Karel Teige and the Devetsil Architects”, op. cit. 86  Teige, “K sociologii architektury”, op. cit., p. 177. 87  Teige, “Mundaneum”, op. cit., p. 594. 82

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“metaphysics” a nonsense masquerading as respectable discourse. Rather, his notion of “metaphysics” comes from the Hegelian-Marxist canon, where its meaning approximates to the opposite of “dynamic”—“stiff” or “rigid.” Teige calls “metaphysical” those types of architecture—including some designs by modernists of his day, as we shall see in the following section—which are governed by stiff aesthetic criteria out of synch with the requirements of modern times, rather than by functional considerations alone. Teige’s talk of “metaphysical design” thus subtly differs from the use of the same phrase by some designers at the Bauhaus, who were directly influenced by guest lecturers from the Vienna Circle. These designers also meant by “metaphysical” a non- or counter-functional design. However, instead of rigidity or stiffness, they objected to aesthetic minimalism posing as pure functionality, which actually proved too costly for mass production—a three-dimensional analogue of a grammatical sentence posing as a meaningful statement, which nevertheless proves nonsensical due to its unverifiability.88 Thus Teige does not contrast “positivism” with “metaphysics” in the sense of a knowledge that supposedly transgresses the bounds of sense; nor do his writings show familiarity with the changes in the natural sciences or formal disciplines that prompted the development of logical empiricism.89

6.3  Doctrines vs. Commitments I now turn to three fundamental commitments which I see as common to Teige and logical empiricists. First, there is their common scientism. By “scientism” I mean the view that science is the only legitimate source of knowledge. This view is clearly essential to the positivist tradition with its rejection of philosophy and religion as alternative sources of knowledge. Logical empiricism reveals its commitment to scientism in both parts of its program—in its elimination of metaphysical nonsense, as well as in the project of unified science as a collection of everything that can be known. However, scientism does not necessarily imply phenomenalism—i.e., the view that all that exists consists of sense data—which is an important part of the positivist tradition. (As noted above, phenomenalism is still upheld by Carnap in his Logical Structure of the World.) For example, Teige could qualify as a scienticist, even if he were a consistent scientific materialist—i.e., even if he believed that all  See the anecdote about a “metaphysical“lamp design at the Bauhaus in Galison, “Aufbau/ Bauhaus”, op. cit., p. 735. 89  In an attempt to prove otherwise, Hain makes unfortunate remarks such as the following: “Instruments or monuments, science or art—that sounds reminiscent of the dualism of wave and particle in quantum mechanics” (Hain, “Karel in Wonderland”, op. cit., 312). It should be manifest to everybody that “instrument vs. monument,” “science vs. art” and “wave vs. particle” have absolutely nothing in common except the linguistic form of each being a contrast between two words. One need not know anything about physics to see that Hain completely misinterprets Teige’s view of the relation between instrumental and monumental architecture by insinuating that it should be seen as a kind of “dualism.” 88

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that exists is physical. Teige’s scientism can be inferred from what he opposes rather than from the few positive remarks he makes about science. As we have seen, Teige believes that a building design should be exclusively determined by engineers and scientists. Accordingly, this conception of architecture leaves out artists. “Art” is, for Teige, a major form of ideology, which implies that he takes art to be a key adversary of science. Idealist aesthetics presents art as the realm of eternal aesthetic values, only imperfectly embodied in works of art. An empiricist objects to value talk as being scientifically disreputable because of its unverifiability, and hence meaninglessness. By contrast, Teige argues that the discourse of value is not scientific because scientific sociology—i.e., Marxism—uncovers the ideological duplicity, and hence deceptiveness, of all talk of eternal values.90 Independent of scientism is a commitment to reductionism. One could be a scienticist, and so hold that there is no other route to knowledge than science—and yet at the same time maintain that each individual science is governed by a different methodology, or that each science concerns a class of objects that are not accessible by any other science. Instead of complete pluralism, an influential view in the German cultural milieu was a kind of dualism. One group of sciences was fit to investigate the objects of nature; the other group was suitable for cultural objects. Whilst natural objects reveal regularities in their behavior that make them amenable to subjection under a general law, it can be argued that the singularity and uniqueness of cultural objects defies any general description. This dualism of Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, popular in German academic philosophy around the turn of the twentieth century, is another derivative of Kantianism. The logical empiricist program of unified science is, among other things, an assault on such a dualism.91 There is ultimately but one language—physicalistic language— that can express everything that can possibly be expressed. Should some sentences prove untranslatable into physicalistic language, they in fact do not express meaningful propositions, but are pieces of nonsense deceiving us by their superficial grammaticality. To the extent that logical empiricism requires all sensible discourse to be ultimately physicalistic, it is committed to reductionism. As shown above, Neurath and Carnap regarded Marxism as a physicalistic sociology, hence also expressible in physicalistic language. Teige, to be sure, has nothing to say on the topic of physicalism, but we can safely state that he is also opposed to the dualism of the sciences of nature and the sciences of culture. Whilst he claims on occasion that sociological laws are irreducible to the laws of more basic sciences (such as physiology or biology),92 this does not contradict his overall reductionism, since he is certainly opposed to the idea of mutually exclusive realms of reality, and the corresponding untranslatable discourses. Again, one type of discourse that both Teige and logical empiricists regard as irreducible, and so cognitively disreputable, is aesthetic discourse. (In fact, logical empiricists argue explicitly against the cognitive

 Teige, “Constructivism and the Liquidation of ‘Art’”, op. cit., pp. 333–334.  See Neurath, “Weltanschauung und Marxismus,” op. cit., p. 409. (My translation.). 92  Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, op. cit., p. 37. 90 91

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legitimacy of all value talk, aesthetic or moral; whilst Teige is primarily concerned with aesthetics, his view that value talk is ideological implies that he would dismiss morality as well.) However, whilst Teige agrees with empiricists upon the cognitive bankruptcy of value discourse, there is one significant difference between their respective outlooks. Empiricists allow that such discourse is harmless—maybe even necessary for psychological wellbeing—once the pretense of cognitive significance is dropped.93 For Teige, by contrast, there is nothing that could redeem aesthetic talk in the sphere of architecture, because he believes in that context it always plays a sinister ideological role. Finally, I submit that underlying the doctrines of both Teige and the logical empiricists is rationalism. By this I mean that Teige shares with the members of the Vienna Circle the basic notion that there are ultimately no mysteries, only problems that can be penetrated by the light of reason.94 In the first section I quoted a passage from Carnap’s Preface to his Logical Structure of the World that betrays this commitment, but the very title of the book suggests that logic can lay bare the nature of reality. What is most important is the political implication of this rationalism, namely the idea that it is possible to understand the basic nature of social reality and shape it accordingly. The very same attitude is manifested in Teige’s writings. For example, he says that constructivism “yearns for an elementary transformation of life in the direction of clarity, order, and economy”95 and in his critique of the Mundaneum project he states that architecture infested by the moribund aesthetic discourse “cannot produce works of elementary clarity and purity.”96 I take Teige’s repeated evocation of “clarity” as most significant. Neurath and his colleagues strove to make science transparent by clarifying and, if need be, reforming its language, by means of which they hoped to contribute to a rational reorganization of life. Teige shares this rationalistic ideal in promoting a kind of transparent architecture. It is an architecture whose function is strictly practical and whose complicity in domination was completely eliminated. The logical empiricist belief in the possibility and politically reformist potential of a transparent language and Teige’s belief in the politically reformist efficacy of a transparent architecture reveal the utopian character of their shared rationalism. The utopianism in question consists in the assumption that language could be reformed such that it would be perfectly free of its potential to generate nonsense, and that architecture could be so transformed that it would leave room neither for deception nor domination.

 Thus Carnap speaks favorably of poetry, since he believes it does not pretend to be cognitively meaningful. He argues that metaphysics should be regarded as a poetic language, since its only value consists in a certain aesthetic or soothing effect, and that it would be acceptable as such. See Rudolf Carnap, “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language”, in: A. J. Ayer (Ed.), Logical Positivism. Glencoe: Free Press 1959, pp. 60–81. 94  Clearly, here I give “rationalism” a wider meaning from its usual one, in which it signifies the opposite of empiricism, stating that there are some truths about the world not based on experience. 95  Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, op. cit., p. 297. 96  Teige, “Mundaneum”, op. cit., p. 595. 93

Chapter 7

Arnošt Kolman’s Critique of Mathematical Fetishism Jakub Mácha and Jan Zouhar

…is a huge, blindingly transparent tank taking the form of a kind of endlessly complex polyhedron, located somewhere beyond space and time. It is a tank filled with pure thought, symbols and without any form of judgment and devoid of any content. It is a tank into which their worshipers plunge their eternally reproducing logical constructions and mathematical schemes of the world. … Such is logicism. … This is the escape of philosophers into absolute logical truth, an escape not only from material existence but also from spiritual experiences as well, into a world which is said to be elevated over both subjectivity and objectivity. … But neither does the suicidal fetishization of perishing, which the existentialists worship, nor the fetishization of ‘pure science’, which the ‘logical positivists’ pray to (and which actually means the death of science), have any firm ground beneath them.1

When Arnošt Kolman uttered these impassioned words at the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy in Amsterdam in 1948, he drew a strong condemnation from Bertrand Russell. Their exchange ended up in personal attacks.2 In this paper, we would like to look at Kolman’s arguments against logical atomism which revolve around the notion of the fetishization of mathematics.

1  Arnošt Kolman, “Úkoly soudobé filosofie”, in: Tvorba, Vol. 17, No. 33, 1948, p. 647. English translation: Arnošt Kolman, “Tasks of Contemporary Philosophy”, in: Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2016. The congress is covered in Russell’s Collected Papers, Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament 1943–68, ed. by John G. Slater, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 115–116. All other translations from Czech and Russian are ours. 2  For details of this exchange see Jakub Mácha, “Arnošt Kolman and Bertrand Russell at the 1948 International Congress of Philosophy”, in: Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, Vol. 36, No.2, 2017, pp. 128–138.

J. Mácha (*) · J. Zouhar Department of Philosophy, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_7

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7.1  Commodity Fetishism in Marx Kolman derives his notion of fetishism from Marx’s conception of commodity fetishism, or from capital fetishism as expounded in Marx’s Capital.3 What Kolman is aiming for is not the nature of the relations between individuals and their praxis in commodity production. Here he is aiming for the fact that an entity (system, structure, logical construction) acquires besides its real existence another formal existence. It is this doubling of its existence and then the becoming of an independent driving force that is developing independently of, but at the same time determining the character of the field of its activity. Fetishes belong to human existence. No nations, no individual can do without them. They appear in public life as a part of ideologies in a new form, as a bearable guise of real and unwanted truth, however they should not have any place in science.

7.2  Application of the Concept of Fetishism on Mathematics According to Marx, commodity fetishism occurs if the exchange value of a commodity (i.e. its exchange form) appears to have no connection with the use value of the commodity (i.e. its natural form). The commodity-form which is detached from the physical nature of the commodity has a phantasmagoric appearance. Fetishism means this fantastic detachment of the physical characteristics of real things or phenomena from these things.4 The distinctive feature of a mathematical fetishism is that the detached characteristics are quantitative properties.5 Kolman speaks mostly of mathematical fetishism, less often of logical fetishism. We will return to this distinction in the contexts of Kolman’s critique of reducing mathematics to logic and logic to mathematics. It is noteworthy that these quantitative properties do not need to necessary be illusory or erroneous. The formal or abstract concepts, which we use to express these properties, acquire a standalone existence. In the second step (on a higher level) of this development, mathematical or logical categories are proclaimed to be the only true reality. Mathematical principles are proclaimed to be

 Karl Marx, Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977. The passage on commodity fetishism is Section 4 “The fetishism of commodities and the secret of thereof”. 4  Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky [The Critical Exposition of the Symbolic Method of Modern Logic]. Praha: Orbis, 1948, p. 280. 5  Kolman had already written in 1931 that the roots of mathematical fetishism go back to Hegel. Kolman appreciated that “by coming out against the fetishisation of quantity, which after all is only a reflection of the abstract money-trading relations of the bourgeois order, Hegel in this case actually burst apart the framework of bourgeois philosophy.” (Ernst Kolman, Sofya Yanovskaya, “Гегель и математика” [“Hegel and Mathematics”], Под знаменем марксизма [Under the Banner of Marxism], No. 11–12, 1931, pp.  107–120. English translation in: Mathematical Manuscripts of Karl Marx. London: New Park Publications, 1983, pp. 235–255, p. 242.) 3

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the principles of all being.6 Mathematical concepts and principles, therefore, can undergo change independently of the things from which they have been abstracted. There is no reluctance to the formation of new, more and more complex mathematical structures which allegedly then disclose the deepest metaphysical truths about all being. Mathematical fetishism is according to Kolman something that is typical of our way of thinking which “has an inert inclination towards turning this relative side of knowledge into an absolute one.”7 However, more important here are the social conditions that lead to fetishism. In order to investigate them closer let us turn now to ancient societies where these relations were much more transparent than they are today.

7.3  Pythagorean Fetishism Kolman discovers the roots of contemporary mathematical fetishism to be in Ancient Greece in the form of the Pythagorean teachings. The core of Pythagorean fetishism is the taking of mathematical relations or ratios for the origins (ἀρχή) of all being. Kolman quotes the following passage from Aristotle: …the so-called Pythagoreans applied themselves to mathematics, and were the first to develop this science; and through studying it they came to believe that its principles are the principles of everything. And since numbers are by nature first among these principles, and they fancied that they could detect in numbers, to a greater extent than in fire and earth and water, many analogues of what is and comes into being—such and such a property of number being justice, and such and such soul or mind, another opportunity, and similarly, more or less, with all the rest—and since they saw further that the properties and ratios of the musical scales are based on numbers, and since it seemed clear that all other things have their whole nature modelled upon numbers, and that numbers are the ultimate things in the whole physical universe, they assumed the elements of numbers to be the elements of everything, and the whole universe to be a proportion or number.8

For explaining the origin of Pythagoreanism, some additional social circumstances are needed. These circumstances remained covert to Aristotle. In Pythagoreanism, the abstract is detached from the concrete and the reason for this detachment is to disguise the real nature of things for the majority of ancient society. The abstract realm is portrayed here as less easy to understand. The true root of fetishism is commodity production.9 The numerical form of things is fetishized into the form of number, in order to better enable the monetary exchange of goods. Together with this absolutization of numbers, monetary r­ elations

 Ibid., p. 251.  Ibid., p. 19. 8  Aristotle, Metaphysics. Trans. A. Armstrong. London: Heinemann 1933, I.5, 985b–986a. 9  Arnošt Kolman, “O podstatě a původu pythagoreismu” [On the Nature and Origin of Pythagoreanism], in: Česká mysl, No. 40, 1947, p. 148. 6 7

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are rendered to be absolute as well. We can perceive here in an embryonic form that things start to acquire properties that are not contained in them. They are at the same time objective properties still, because one could indeed exchange the commodity at this value. Aristotle asks in vain: Why do the properties of mathematical objects occur in perceivable things, if they are not contained in them?10 The explanation of metaphysical theories lies in the social base and “the objectively existing commodity fetishism of human relations finds its reflection also in an ideological superstructure”.11 Pythagorean fetishism and their numeral mysticism, thus has a socio-political rather than naturalistic origin.12 Pythagoreanism is a typical example of the metaphysical way of thinking, characterized by Kolman as the transposing of that which is created by our thinking onto the world, nature and society.13 Laws of thought, i.e. logical laws, are not found in nature nor derived from praxis; they are given to us a priori and independently of any praxis. They are only applied on nature and social praxis. To acknowledge the praxis as the sole criterion of truth means to accept the material character of reality. Anything else is idealism. With this delimitation in mind we can now turn to logical positivism.

7.4  Logical Positivism Already by 1931 in the journal Under the Banner of Marxism in the article “Hegel and Mathematics”,14 Kolman had positively assessed the merits that Hegel enjoyed in this area of mathematics. Hegel refused the a priori formalist approach to mathematical axioms and theorems. Kolman wrote critically about the “logicists” (Russell, Frege), who in his opinion had overturned mathematics into a grammar, into a colossal tautology, which was then unable to bring any new knowledge to the subject of its investigation. This one-sided approach to reality could not comprehend the desired connection with the practice of mathematics. According to Kolman, the role of mathematics in science is limited—unlike that of Kant’s approach where science requires or better presupposes mathematics. Mathematical concepts do not express any absolutely unchanging, eternal truths; they are connected with society itself, alongside with the other (natural or social) sciences.  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, XIII.9, 1085a–b.  Arnošt Kolman, “O podstatě a původu pythagoreismu”, op. cit., p. 149. 12  Max Weber also thought that Pythagoreanism had a socio-political origin. But for him, this movement does not express or mirror the ideology of a ruling class, but rather “emerge[s] when the ruling strata, noble or middle class, have lost their political power to a bureaucratic-militaristic unitary state.” (Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Trans. and ed. G. Roth, C. Wittich et al. Berkeley: University of California Press 1978, Vol. 1, p. 503.) 13  Arnošt Kolman, Logika [Logic]. Praha: Svoboda 1947, p. 161. 14  Ernst Kolman, Sofya Yanovskaya, “Гегель и математика” [“Hegel and Mathematics”], Под знаменем марксизма [Under the Banner of Marxism], No. 11–12, 1931, pp. 107–120. 10 11

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In his main work, The Critical Exposition of the Symbolic Method of Modern Logic (1948), Kolman knuckles down to a sharp critique of the tenets of analytic philosophy of that time, i.e. logical empiricism and neo-positivism. The core of this critique is already present in his critique of Pythagoreanism: “They are ancient, long time refuted thoughts that are go back to Platonism, Pythagoreanism.”15 Kolman uses the expressions “logical positivism”, “modern positivism”, “logical atomism” almost interchangeably as different labels for a more or less unified philosophical movement. He finds the main features of this movement to be: (1) neutral monism (reality is neither material, nor ideal), (2) the task of philosophy is the description of phenomena, not their explanation, (3) diminishing or refuting the significance of philosophy.16 If the task of philosophy is only the describing of positive facts or showing that anything that goes beyond them is nonsensical, “then it is natural that the method of the most universal science—mathematics—becomes the universal method of knowledge”.17 According to Kolman—and this is the core of his argument—the fetishization of mathematics follows then from the limited role of philosophy. If philosophy were deprived of every critical and explanatory task, then only a logical analysis of language would remain. The principles of such an analysis must (logically, not temporally) precede every statement itself. Logical laws must be a priori. The independence of the logical laws of facts means that they can be applied to all facts, i.e. to the whole world which is the totality of facts.18 Logical laws are thus the principles of all being.19

7.5  Logic and Mathematics Kolman, being a mathematician in the first place, speaks mainly about mathematical fetishism and less often about logical fetishism.20 He also criticized the attempts of reducing mathematics to logic (logicism) and vice versa. Mathematics and logic have according to Kolman different tasks. Logic “studies arbitrary forms independently of their content”.21 The task of logic is a clarification of the (logical) structure

 Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., p. 7.  Ibid., p. 276. 17  Ibid., p. 277. 18  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. by D. Pears and B. McGuinness. London: Routledge 1961, §1.1. 19  This argument can be applied to any a priori law or structure. See in this context the chapter “The Criticism of Kantianism from the Left and From the Right” from Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism. (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy. Lenin Collected Works. Vol.14. Trans. A. Fineberg. Moscow: Progress Publishers 1972.) 20  Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., pp. 212 & 219. 21  Ibid., p. 18. 15 16

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of sciences, including mathematics,22 while mathematics studies only the quantitative forms and relations. In order to clarify the logical structure of science, simple logical systems are enough. These systems can be modeled mathematically (classical logic can be taken as Boolean algebra). Mathematics is on the one hand a part of logic (because it studies quantitative forms only), its combinational possibilities on the other hand far exceed the possibilities of classical logic. Kolman ascribes this attempt of reducing mathematics to logic to Frege and Russell23 and the opposite attempt of reducing logic to mathematics to the Vienna Circle,24 but also to Russell and Wittgenstein.25 Kolman is inaccurate here and his arguments are abridged. In the end, it is not decisive whether the most fundamental abstraction is mathematical or logical. As we have seen above, from one perspective, mathematics is a part of logic; from another perspective it is the other way around. It is nevertheless a formal abstraction and Kolman criticizes their arbitrary detachment from the content and their fetishization. Ultimately: “Formal logic as well as mathematics … divides what is actually connected, and connects what in fact is divided.”26

7.6  C  ritical Assessment of Kolman’s Reception of Logical Positivism Do Russell, Wittgenstein and members of the Vienna Circle commit fetishization of mathematics or logic? Bertrand Russell was a leading proponent of neutral monism in the twentieth century. After years of sympathizing with this doctrine he fully subscribed to it in his book The Analysis of Mind: “both mind and matter are composed of a neutral-­ stuff which, in isolation, is neither mental nor material.”27 In Russell, we find also Kolman’s second and third characteristic of logical positivism. The task of philosophy is the logical analysis of positive facts, not their explanation: “The business of philosophy … is essentially that of logical analysis, followed by logical synthesis”28; or: “The most important part … consists in criticizing and clarifying notions”.29 The significance of philosophy is reduced to the anticipation of the yet unknown. The

 Ibid., p. 220.  Ibid., pp. 199 & 203. 24  Ibid., p. 205. 25  Ibid., pp. 253–4. 26  Ibid., p. 230. 27  Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind. London: George Allen & Unwin 1921, p. 25. 28  Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. London: Routledge 2010, p. 147. 29  Ibid. 22 23

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difference between philosophy and science is only in that philosophy is concerned with what we do not know, while science with what we already know.30 In this scientific image, Russell did not hesitate to accept that there are general principles that cannot be derived from experience. In Wittgenstein’s Tractatus there are plenty of assertions that meet Kolman’s characteristics. Wittgenstein clearly meets the second and third characteristic of logical positivism: (2) Philosophy is the logical analysis of (scientific) language31 and (3) very little is achieved by solving (all) philosophical problems.32 For the first characteristic—neutral monism—there is no unambiguous confirmation to be found in the Tractatus. Objects make up the substance of the world. But Wittgenstein leaves open whether these objects are dependent on the thinking subject. Kolman (without any backing argument) inclines to the so-called epistemological interpretation, which is close to Russell and was later revived by Hintikka33: Objects are sensory perceptions, i.e. sensory data.34 Apart from this interpretation, both realistic and idealistic interpretations of objects have appeared. Wittgenstein was reluctant to decide as to the character of the basic building blocks of the world. Therefore, we can also—albeit indirectly—attribute neutral monism to him. The absolutization and fetishization of logic should therefore result from these three characteristics. And indeed, such claims are to be found in the Tractatus. Logical tautologies describe the basic structure of the world. Wittgenstein speaks directly about the scaffolding of the world “Gerüst der Welt”.35 Rudolf Carnap in his book The Logical Structure of the World (Der Logische Aufbau der Welt)36 explicitly endorses Mach’s neutral monism. The basic building blocks of his Aufbau are called “elementary experiences”, which Carnap later called “basic elements” and likened to Mach’s elements, i.e. the concrete sensory data. Carnap’s conception of philosophy draws on many ideas from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Philosophy is the logical analysis of language. For Carnap, the principles of logical analysis are expressible in terms of logical syntax. (For Wittgenstein, these principles are ultimately unnecessary, since they are shown in a logical notation of ideal scientific language.) A language for the describing of logical syntax is  Ibid., p. 124.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, op. cit., §6.53. 32  Ibid., Preface. 33  Merrill Hintikka and Jaakko Hintikka, Investigating Wittgenstein. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986, pp. 51ff. maintain that the primary language of the Tractatus is phenomenological. The objects of the Tractatus are very close to Russell’s objects of acquaintance, i.e. to sense-data. See also Andreas Blank, “Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and the Problem of a Phenomenological Language”, in: Philosophia, Vol. 29, No. 1–4, 2002, p. 327. 34  Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., p. 204. 35  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, op. cit., §6.124. 36  Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World. Trans. R.  George. Chicago: Open Court Classics 2003. 30 31

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a meta-language which refers to the object language. The basic principles of a meta-­ language must be based on another meta-meta-language, or there must be obvious logical axioms. Like Russell, Carnap is forced to accept that there are general ­principles that cannot be derived from experience. This is approaching Hilbert’s meta-­mathematics. It also may explain why Kolman attributes to Carnap an attempt “to create a universal mathematical philosophical theory of all being”.37 Curiously enough though, for Carnap logic laws were not the principle of all being. Logic, according to Carnap, is conventional. His view is expressed, for instance, in the following passage: It is important to notice that the logical and mathematical objects are not actually objects in the sense of real objects (objects of the empirical sciences). Logic (including mathematics) consists solely of conventions concerning the use of symbols, and of tautologies on the basis of these conventions. Thus, the symbols of logic (and mathematics) do not designate objects, but merely serve as symbolic fixations of these conventions.38

Carnap also endorses Kolman’s three main features of logical positivism without explicitly slipping into logical or mathematical fetishism. If it were possible, this would pose a serious problem for Kolman’s main argument as exposed above. The language of logic (or of meta-language) is conventional. For Carnap (as well as for Wittgenstein), there are no logical or mathematical objects to which logical or mathematical concepts refer (cf. Wittgenstein’s fundamental idea that logical constants do not represent any objects or facts). Wittgenstein concludes that “The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it.”39 How then is Carnap able to resist coming to this conclusion? Well, only by the construing of a hierarchy of metalanguages. But as already said this hierarchy cannot run into infinity. Sooner or later, one will be forced to admit some principles or axioms that are not derived from any meta-language. They must be in a certain sense obvious. This is to say that the reason why these principles are “obvious” is inexpressible, but one part of their obviousness is that they can be applied (through the hierarchy of metalanguages) to all facts. It is, however, not plausible to claim that these principles are conventional, which therefore means, they are arbitrary. Carnap is, in the end, forced to Wittgenstein’s conclusion and thus to the fetishization of logic and mathematics. We can therefore conclude that Kolman’s understanding of logical positivism— as he demarcated this view—is correct, even considering some inaccuracies and false attributions.

 Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., p. 254.  Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, op. cit., p. 178; Carnap’s italics. 39  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, op. cit., §6.124. 37 38

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7.7  Arguments Against Fetishization The above mentioned philosophers do something that has always been one of the main tasks of metaphysics: They are all looking for the essential features of reality by abstracting from accidental features. Why should Kolman, and hence Marxism, be bothered about this? Lenin’s work Materialism and Empirio-criticism40 is a fundamental attack on Mach’s neutral monism from a Marxist standpoint. Lenin shows that although Mach and his successors were trying to be neutral as regards the decision between materialism and idealism, nevertheless they lapse into Berkeleyan subjective idealism in yet another guise. Kolman applied Lenin’s arguments to Russell’s neutral monism. This idealism has socio-political origins, as we have seen in a much simpler form with Pythagoreism: “the socio-political sense of this fetishization of mathematics and of the entire neopositivism … is that this ‘reality’ that is neither material nor spiritual, allows the opportunity to take our ideas for being just as the ‘real’ essence as things and phenomena of the material world are, and thus ultimately justify ‘real’ politics … based on the misleading views on the possibility and necessity of reconciliation with this nasty order of parasitism, violence and lies.”41 Mathematical fetishism arises from the mycelium of neutral monism, whose socio-political sense is that it allows for maintaining the status quo of social relations and conditions. Is this a serious argument, or rather just a piece of communist propaganda? Is there any connection between the fetishization of logic or mathematics and conservatism in social order? If there is any connection at all, it is not a priori but rather a posteriori. Hegelian and Marxist philosophy is not an inquiry into a priori laws or forms. Hegelian philosophy can understand social practices (“shapes of the spirit”) only in retrospect. If this understanding is correct, if the theory correctly interprets its object, then it can have a prospective effect.42 Kolman only suggests that it is plausible to see a connection between mathematical and logical fetishism and conservatism. A priori laws are derived, by means of abstraction, from experience. Kant, for example, derived his list of categories from the forms of possible judgment. These forms of judgment are given to us in the experience of judging. Kant gives no argument that he had enlisted all the possible forms of judgment. There is no convincing argument that Kant’s list is exhaustive (and it is clear that by considering only the subject-predicate forms he must have missed some other forms). In a further step, we see that empirical evidence (the list) is fixed at some point and a priori laws are derived from it. These a priori laws may include also social laws. The connection to social conservatism lies in this fixing of the experience  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy, op. cit. 41  Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., p. 277. 42  See Shaun Gallagher, Hegel, History, and Interpretation. SUNY Press: Albany, New York 1997, p. 9. 40

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used for the derivation of a priori laws. No further experience is conceived of, no experience that may possibly contradict the actual a priori law. Hence, it is plausible to see a connection here between mathematical and logical fetishism and conservatism.43 Kolman’s second main argument is that the logical and mathematical fetishes are epistemologically deprived of any historical and dynamic dimension. This argument or rather objection goes back to Herder’s and Hegel’s critique of Kant’s apriorism. Formal logic examines only the isolated and unchangeable forms of thoughts, “but they are not sufficient for an adequately truly scientific understanding of the world”.44 Logic and mathematics are historical sciences and their truths are historically contingent. Mathematical and logical fetishism overlooks this conditionality. Logical positivists may concede that there are different logics. Moreover, they may admit that one logical system evolved from a historically earlier logical system. They may admit as matter of fact that logic has history. But this development is something external and accidental to a particular logical system which cannot explain its essential characteristics as being necessarily evolved from previous systems. The basic foundation of all epistemology is not logic or mathematics, but the praxis. If we did not admit the criterion of praxis for the sufficient criterion of knowledge, then we would not recognize the materiality of the world.45 Or, in Lenin’s words: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”46

 Curiously enough, there has been developed quite opposed arguments claiming that there is a substantial connection between logical positivism and Marxism or communism. Heidegger is the most striking case. He wrote in a reply to Carnap’s paper “Überwinding der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache”: “It is also no accident that this kind of ‘philosophy’ stands in both internal and external connection with Russian communism.” His argument, for the internal relatedness, is that in the mathematical philosophy, truth is diverted into a certainty, which leads to the profaning [Entgötterung] of the world. If we get over Heidegger’s too quickly equating Russian communism and Marxism in general, we see he is not the only one holding this view. The goal of Neurath’s scientific philosophy was social and political progress in broadly Marxist perspective. Also Carnap, at least partly, admitted this internal connection when he reported his “Marxist views on how metaphysics will be overcome through reformation [Umgestaltung] of the substructure.” (The quotations are taken from Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 2000, pp. 22, 21. See for more discussion therein.) It seems, thus, that logical positivism and Marxism are allies rather than enemies. All these facts pose serious problems for Kolman’s view. 44  Arnošt Kolman, Kritický výklad symbolické metody moderní logiky, op. cit., p. 211. 45  Arnošt Kolman, Logika, op. cit., p. 167. 46  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, op. cit., p. 142. 43

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7.8  Kolman in Context Although Arnošt Kolman’s critique of mathematical fetishism is unique in the Czech context, he was not the first one who criticized logical positivism. The aim of this final section of our paper is to place Koman’s thinking into a broader context of the Marxist critique of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy. David Guest (1911–1938) was a British philosopher and communist activist who studied under Moore and Wittgenstein in Cambridge at the beginning of the 1930s. Then he visited Russia and published, in the Soviet journal Under the Banner of Marxism, a paper “The Machian Tendency in Modern British Philosophy” (in Russian).47 Under the Banner of Marxism was the most significant philosophical journal in the Soviet Union at that time attracting the most outstanding Soviet scholars. Kolman was back then a member of the editorial board and one of the most frequent authors.48 Let us look closely at Guest’s arguments that must have inspired Kolman’s subsequent writings. Guest aims in the paper to expose Machian tendencies, and primarily the neutral position between idealism and materialism, in Russell, Wittgenstein and Whitehead. The most elaborate part of the paper is devoted to Russell. Guest traces back Russell’s neutral monism through his writings from early on to his most recent book The Analysis of Matter where neutral monism is fully accepted. Guest identifies a methodological principle which leads to neutral monism in Russell’s Principle of Economy: “The supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing is this: Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.”49,50 Hence, Guest argues, Russell’s scientific philosopher has to construct objects, space and time out of complexes of sense-data.51 Guest further focuses on Russell’s account of particulars. Material objects are given to us through sense-data. This means, however, that material objects are constructed out of sense-data. Applying the Principle of Economy shows that particulars, thus, must include sense-data or—as Russell calls them—appearances, but not material objects. Russell is forced to accept that there exist possible, i.e. non-actual appearances (or “sensibilia” as Russell also calls them). This possibility of non-actual appearances follows from the fact that appearances are more basic than physical states made of material objects. Actual brains are physical states, hence “‘Appearances’ may perhaps exist without there being brains

 David Guest, “The Machian Tendency in Modern British Philosophy”, in: Carmel Haden Guest (Ed.), David Guest: A Scientist Fights for Freedom (1911–1938). A Memoir. London: Lawrence & Wishart 1939, pp. 219–249. First published in Russian in: Under the Banner of Marxism, No. 5, 1934, pp. 31–45. 48  See the discussion of Kolman’s paper “Hegel and Mathematics” above. 49  Bertrand Russell, “The Relation of Sense-data to Physics”, in: Mysticism and Logic. London: George Allen & Unwin 1917, p. 115. 50  Carnap took this maxim as the epigraph of The logical Structure of the World (1928). 51  David Guest, “The Machian Tendency in Modern British Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 224. 47

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to perceive them.”52 Guest acknowledges that this argument is derived from Lenin’s critique of so-called “brainless philosophy”.53 Guest’s critique of Russell continues: Appearances exist in time. Russell admits that there are chains of appearances or sensibilia that can be attributed to one’s experience. Such chains are called “biographies”: “By this means, the history of the world is divided into a number of mutually exclusive biographies.”54 But, given that there can exist appearances without being actually realized in anybody’s brain, biographies consisting of such appearances are simply disembodied spirits.55 Guest further moves on to Russell’s Analysis of Matter (1927), where the principle of economy is called “the principle of logical construction” and the neutral elements are called “events”. Events are, according to Russell, metaphysically primitive entities. But again, percepts (as Russell now calls his appearances or sensebilia) are events, but physical objects such as electrons, protons or points in space-time are not. Guest, thus, concludes that this is “the very same theory of disembodies perceptions” that we met earlier. Guest’s argument as to why Berkeleyan idealism in the guise of neutral monism has to be rejected is very sketchy. He says: “What is common to all these views is that they are all on the inclined plane slipping down to mysticism and religion.”56 The same is true of Kolman’s arguments in this respect as well. Guest’s paper continues in the same vein with a critique of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Guest takes the Tractatus as a kind of confirmation of the intricate connection of logical positivism and religion or, better to say, mysticism: We have here a masterly example of an undialectical philosophy, anti-historical and metaphysical to an extreme. … And here too we can learn how an attitude of extreme empiricism … when pushed to its logical conclusion leads to utter mysticism.57,58

In conclusion, Guest’s paper—strong in its application of Lenin’s critique of Machian philosophy onto Russell’s neutral monism—must have been an inspiration for Kolman’s more elaborate critique of logical positivism. Guest’s critique might have been influenced by Wittgenstein himself who, in his lectures at the beginning of the 1930s, criticized Russell’s and his own earlier account of logic.59 Although Wittgenstein did not explicitly address neutral monism  Ibid., p. 226.  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, op. cit., p. 49. 54  Bertrand Russell, “The Relation of Sense-data to Physics”, op. cit., p. 123. 55  David Guest, “The Machian Tendency in Modern British Philosophy”, op. cit., p. 227. 56  Ibid., p. 232. 57  Ibid., p. 238. 58  It is a historical irony that some contemporary interpretations take the Tractatus to be dialectical, historical and anti-metaphysical. See, e.g., Mathew Ostrow, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 and Ben Ware, Dialectic of the Ladder. Wittgenstein, the ‘Tractatus’ and Modernism. London: Bloomsbury 2015. 59  Our claim is that there is a significant substantial affinity between Kolman’s notion of mathematical fetishism and Wittgenstein’s notion of sublimation of logic. Moreover, there might have been a two-way influence. There are some hints at least. Wittgenstein had visited Russia in 1935. His 52 53

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(or we do not possess any record of it at least), the idea behind was clear: Logic is nothing sublime. Wittgenstein speaks later in the Philosophical Investigations about “the tendency to sublimate the logic of our language”.60 The sublimation of logic means to bestow upon it a universal significance. More specifically: For logical investigation explores the essence of all things. It seeks to see to the foundation of things, and shouldn’t concern itself whether things actually happen in this or that way. — It arises neither from an interest in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp causal connections, but from an urge to understand the foundations, or essence, of everything empirical.61

In other words, logic does not express the essence of all things. This is, the same point that is pressed by Kolman, i.e., logic must not be fetishized. Not logic, but practice lies at the bottom of our knowledge. If Wittgenstein says that we should look at the use of our language, he comes very close to Marx’ and Lenin’s standpoint of practice. This observation—this primacy of practice in Marx as well as in Wittgenstein—has not escaped the attention of some commentators. So David Andrews proposes that “commodity fetishism should be understood as the form of life, the activity of the participants of the system of commodity production, which corresponds to what I have called the value language-game.”62 Andrews argues that commodity fetishism arises because people see commodities as objectified products of labour, while in fact “commodities do not possess any other objective character”.63 Commodity fetishism is not only an illusion, “it is a feature of how things actually are in commodity production. Commodity fetishism is an activity in which people engage, a form of life.”64 Translating Marx’s idea into the language of the later Wittgenstein may make Marx’s point about commodity fetishism more comprehensible for us. Now, with the help of Kolman, this point can be extended onto mathematical and logical fetishism. Fetishism in this respect is something natural in our philosophical praxis; it is the tendency to see mathematics or logic as something sublime, as something behind all facts, as something essential to them, as something a priori. It is (part of) the tendency to find the objective order out of chaos. Logical and mathematical properties and relations are, at the same time, not pure illusions. They have various roles

main contact and host there was Sofya Yanovskaya, Kolman’s long-time collaborator, who coauthored Kolman’s early paper ‘Hegel and Mathematics’ (see footnote 5). Wittgenstein was familiar with the main tenets of dialectical materialism and had acquaintance with parts of Marx’s Capital. (See John Moran, “Wittgenstein and Russia”, in: New Left Review, No. 73, 1972, pp. 85–96.) 60  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. G.  E. M.  Anscombe and R.  Rhees (eds), trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, revised by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, revised fourth edition. London: Blackwell 2009, §38. 61  Ibid., §89. 62  David Andrews, “Commodity Fetishism as a Form of Life”, in: Gavin Kitching and Nigel Pleasants (eds.), Marx and Wittgenstein. Knowledge, Morality and Politics. London: Routledge 2002, p. 85. 63  Ibid., p. 88. 64  Ibid., p. 89.

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in our thinking or more specifically in our philosophical praxis, e.g. making our ideas clear, distinguishing between valid and invalid judgements, or making counting easier etc. But, if we, in our philosophical praxis, take mathematical or logical properties as expressing the objective character of things, they acquire a double fantastic existence—they become fetishes. These fetishes as autonomous existences then strike back, they put constraints on things and facts (e.g. in sayings like “logics does not allow this or that”). This is a kind of conservativism that has social impacts, and this is something Kolman wanted to overcome or at least to curb. In order to get rid of logical fetishes, it is not simply enough to recognize their illusory character. We must change our whole philosophical praxis. Philosophy, as Marx had put forward, has to become social criticism.

7.9  Appendix: Mathematical Fetishism Today The focus of this paper is predominantly historical. But in this appendix, we would like to apply Kolman’s arguments against mathematical fetishism onto its contemporary form which has received a lot attention nowadays. Kolman defines mathematical fetishism as the view that mathematical principles are the principles of all being, that is to say that mathematics has an ontological relevance. Aspects of this view are to be found in the time of Pythagoreanism and later in logical positivism in the first half of the twentieth century.65 But mathematical fetishism is not something that belongs only to the past. One of the most prominent philosophers today, Alain Badiou, claims that “ontology, the science of being qua being, is nothing other than mathematics itself.”66 In his main work Being and Event, the mathematical foundation of ontology is made up by (classical) set theory where “every ‘object’ is reducible to a pure multiplicity”.67 Every situation (which is in Badiou’s terminology any “presented multiplicity”) is from the ontological point of view a set. Furthermore, “There is nothing apart from situations.”68 Hence, sets are everything that there is. Badiou also presents a mathematical theory of all being—which is something that Kolman (falsely) ascribed to Carnap. Only Badiou’s main thesis is sketched here (other important tenets of his theory will be presented below), but we can nevertheless ask whether it is a case of mathematical fetishism. And indeed, in their highly critical review of Being and Event, Ricardo L. Nirenberg and David Nirenberg objected to Badiou that set-theoretical objects are unchangeable: “An ontology that takes ZF set theory as its basis must  This remark does not mean that mathematical fetishism is to be found only in Pythagoreanism and logical positivism. One could also mention Galileo at least. 66  Alain Badiou, Being and Event. Trans. by Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum 2005, p.xiii. 67  Ibid., p. 14. In Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II. London: Continuum, 2009, Badiou provides a theory of appearance (which he calls phenomenology) based on category theory. For the sake of simplicity, we restrict the present discussion to Badiou’s treatment of set theory. 68  Alain Badiou, Being and Event, op. cit., p. 25. 65

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deny reality to that which is affected; it must take math as the only real knowledge and mathematical objects as the only real beings, as Badiou himself repeatedly asserts. On these grounds alone we feel justified in calling Badiou more of a Pythagorean than a Platonist.”69 What is the argument here at stake? The Nirenbergs object that Badiou’s ontology is, in the end, static, incapable of any change. This argument resembles Kolman’s first argument above. But Badiou’s consequences for social philosophy are anything but conservative. On the contrary, his ontology is capable of accounting for radical novelty and change in the social order, i.e. revolution. Novelty and change enter Badiou’s ontology through his concept of “generic extension”. Without going into complex technical details, a generic extension is when it is “added to the situation without being able to be directly deduced from it,” it also “unveils unknown possibilities of the primitive situation”.70 This set-­ theoretical formalism allows, thus, the extension of a set in such a way that in this new set there is a discernible property that was indiscernible by any predicate in the initial set. Such an extension remains random from the perspective of the initial set; it depends only on a generic procedure. By analogy with his set-theoretical foundations, Badiou distinguishes four generic procedures: love, art, science, and politics. “What happens in art, in science, in true (rare) politics, and in love (if it exists), is the coming to light of an indiscernible of the times, which, as such, is neither a known or recognized multiple, nor an ineffable singularity”.71 Love, art, science, and politics are generic procedures, because they “generate—infinitely—truths concerning situations”72 and other practices do not. Badiou’s set-theoretical foundation of ontology, thus, allows for radical change (personal or political freedom), that is it allows for the emerging of a situation that is radically different from the initial situation. Kolman’s charge of political conservativism therefore does not apply here, for Badiou’s mathematical ontology is much more thought-out than Kolman ever imagined. Badiou’s ontology, thus, escapes from Kolman’s first argument against mathematical fetishism.73 But what about his second argument, i.e., that mathematical fetishes are deprived of any historical perspective? Let us put the problem this way: What is it that makes the connection between mathematical formalism (which has according to Badiou ontological primordiality) and (individual or social) praxis? Or why are there exactly these four

 Ricardo L. Nirenberg and David Nirenberg, “Badiou’s Number: A Critique of Mathematics as Ontology”, in: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 606–7. The authors also mention Kolman and his role in the Luzin affair. 70  Alain Badiou, “To Preface the Response to the ‘Criticisms’ of Ricardo Nirenberg and David Nirenberg”, in: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2012, p. 363. 71  Alain Badiou, Being and Event, op. cit., p. 17. 72  Ibid., p. 340. 73  On the other hand, Badiou thinks, in agreement with Kolman, that analytic philosophy is inherently non-dialectical and it is internally related to conservativism. (Cf. Alain Badiou, “What is Philosophy?”. In: European Graduate School Video Lectures, YouTube, 2 May 2011. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6FQkTajudY, 27 July 2015.) 69

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generic procedures? Do really only love, art, science, and politics generate new knowledge and the other practices do not? A Marxist, for example, would opt for political economy as the only generic procedure?74 Does it not hold that a new piece of knowledge may emerge in every kind of practice? And finally, can we answer these questions once and for all?75 Our point is that no matter how we answer these questions, such answers are not deducible from the mathematical framework that Badiou employs. Naming the four generic procedures is, at best, an analogy to the set-theoretical concept of genericity. No mathematical formalism speaks for itself or, it is better to say, that every (piece of) mathematical formalism (i.e., every formal language) must be applied onto reality if it should deliver any substantial knowledge about reality. Such an application involves a non-trivial projection.76 A projection is a way of reading off the formal language; it is an interpretation of this language. But then a projection is the praxis of interpreting the language. The upshot of this is that mathematics (which is ontology) depends on the praxis which is socially and historically determined. To conclude, Badiou with his ingenious employment of mathematical formalism is able to escape from Kolman’s charge of political conservativism, but not from Kolman’s second argument against mathematical fetishism (that it is deprived of any historical dimension) which applies here too. Acknowledgement  We would like to thank Ken Blackwell, Bernard Linsky, Jim Klagge, Michael Hauser, Davide Spagnoli, Saman Pushpakumara and the participants of the conferences The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia (Pilsen, February 2015) and SSAHP 2015 (Dublin, June 2015) for their valuable suggestions.

 The fact that for Badiou (political) economy is not the generic procedure (or is not among the generic procedures) has been criticized by various commentators like Žižek or Livingston. See Paul M.  Livingston, The Politics of Logic. Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism. New York and London: Routledge, 2012, p. 300. 75  The fact that there are exactly four generic procedures (love, art, etc.) is only an example of how Badiou applies mathematical formalism onto our praxis. All his “textual mediations” in Being and Event involve a certain kind of application of his mathematical and ontological discourse. 76  This is the main thesis of Paul Livingston’s critique of Badiou’s project: “Badiou’s application of mathematical formalisms to the diverse questions of social and political life repeatedly involves fundamental gestures of projection, whereby formal and mathematical structures bear the weight of the theorization of such diverse political and ontological concepts” (Paul M. Livingston, The Politics of Logic. Badiou, Wittgenstein, and the Consequences of Formalism, op. cit., p. 10). 74

Chapter 8

Igor Hrušovský on Social Sciences Juraj Hvorecký

8.1  Introduction It has been often remarked that the influence of the Vienna Circle had, and at the same time had not, a clear impact on philosophy in Czechoslovakia. This ambiguity of influence is to be understood from the following crucial facts – while intellectual elites of the German speaking minority of Prague, Brno and Sudetenland had been in close contacts with their Viennese counterparts, the Czech ethnic majority has hardly noticed important developments in their former Imperial capital. The Czechs have largely ignored a steadily growing influence of Vienna over the entire philosophical world. This is yet another example of the abyss the existed between Czechs and Germans during the First Czechoslovak republic. Schooling, local administration, information sources and other usual means of a cultural cohesion were from the very inception of Czechoslovakia in 1918 strictly separated, as Czechs and Slovaks created a barrier that kept all minorities, including the dominant German one, at an arm’s length from constitutionally dominant nations. The rationale and purported justification behind such a divisive political strategy has been a major topic for historians and can be found in many scholarly works.1 As it is virtually always the case, this abyss had detrimental effects on both ethnic groups, though I Work on this study, which is a part of the project “Theories of belief and the foundations of subjective probability”, has been financially supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR, 16-15621S). 1   For examples see J.W.  Bruegel, Czechoslovakia before Munich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1973, or Leff C.  Skalnik, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.

J. Hvorecký (*) Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_8

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dare to speculate that the backlash for the Czechs might have been larger. Not only they missed an opportunity to establish friendly relations with a much larger nation of a great intellectual potential, their loss was also directly visible in the interwar economic and cultural spheres and their theoretical underpinnings. Crucially for our purposes, by enforcing the divide, Czechs also stayed outside of what turned out to be one of the most important philosophical initiatives of the twentieth century. The unfortunate fact of their ignorance of novel ways of philosophizing has been further enlarged by political developments during and after the WWII. Despite some limited contacts between few Czech philosophers (notably L. Tondl) and descendants of the Vienna Circle that from the wartime continuously spread their message around the globe, it is safe to assume that any serious Czech interest into the activities of the Vienna Circle have developed only after the fall of communism in the 1990s.

8.2  Igor Hrušovský and Scientific Synthesis This part of the story is familiar to many and acknowledges prevalent tendencies that were dominant among the Czechoslovak philosophers, brutally controlled by the powerful Marxist ideology that the local Communist government forcibly installed in all educational institutions after the coup of 1948. The evidence is clear  – few prominent scholars from the among the German speaking minority (including, most prominently Philipp Frank and Rudolf Carnap) held vital and lasting ties with their positivist colleagues from Vienna and elsewhere, while their Czech counterparts hardly noticed that a new philosophical storm is taking off. Yet there is a little known side story that deserves a closer scrutiny, exactly because it breaks the usual stereotyping of active Germans and ignorant Czechoslovaks in the process of adopting positivist ways of philosophizing. The main character of the story is Igor Hrušovský, a leading Slovak philosopher of the twentieth century. This intellectual, born in 1907, had a very turbulent life, typical of many Central European figures of the twentieth century, in which politics, ideology, common sense and historical coincidences all play their major roles. Upon finishing high school, Hrušovský first studied biology in Prague and successfully graduated in 1930. After moving to Bratislava, which remained his primary workplace for the rest of his active life, he switched his main interest to philosophy and finished his doctoral degree at the Comenius University in 1936 with his thesis Invencia a vývoj (Invention and Development) to which we turn our attention soon.2 The following year he establishes an informal discussion group of fellow collaborators, emphatically titled Vedecká syntéza (Scientific Synthesis). His Viennese inspirations are clear, though unlike the Vienna Circle, the Scientific Synthesis group concentrates its discussions and outputs on social sciences with the aim to initiate scholarly activities in domains of ethnology, linguistics, psychology under a strong positivist methodological guidance.  Igor Hrušovský, Invencia a vývoj [Invention and Development]. Bratislava: Otto 1935.

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What is more remarkable, this initiative is taking place at the time when Slovak social sciences (and the intellectual life in general) are just being born. Under the Hungarian domination Slovaks in the old Empire had little chances to pursue an independent cultural life and the foundation of Czechoslovakia constitutes a lifesaving support for a nation on a brink of collapse. It is therefore truly remarkable that a newly developing science in the Slovak part of the republic is under a direct influence of the Vienna Circle. The Scientific Synthesis group was very active, especially during the first 2 years of its existence (1937–1938) and a crucial part of its activities consisted of public lectures and debates, often with a participation of leading social scientists, but also artists and the general public. Some of the most famous Czechoslovak (mostly Slovak) intellectuals of the time, including M. Bakoš, J. Mukařovský, E. Paulíny and M. Považan were among the group associates. With the changing political situation in the late 30s, the activities of the group eventually ceased and in 1940, the Scientific syntheses was officially banned. This unfortunate development had little effects on the creative spirit of Hrušovský and the war did not adversely affect his publishing activities. Two of his books appear in the early 40s – Teória vedy (The Theory of Science) in 1941 and Vývin vedeckého myslenia (Development of Scientific Thinking)3 in 1942.4 After the war Hrušovský continues his academic career, continues his extensive publishing activities and openly accepts Marxism as his primary philosophical worldview. It is important to emphasize that his Marxist inclinations are apparent already in his earliest writings and in no way reflect a changing political atmosphere after the war, although they might have been boosted by it. His devotion to Marxism is certainly viewed positively by the new post-war Communist government and Hrušovský starts to play a prominent role in the new system of science and education. However, his broadly liberal stance often clashes with more dogmatic Stalinist approaches to philosophy, though he manages to navigate through the most difficult times and remains a towering figure of the Slovak philosophical life till his death in 1978. He is largely responsible for the founding of both the Institute of Philosophy in Bratislava and the leading (and for years the only) Slovak philosophy journal.5 His strong influence over the development of the post-war philosophical research in Slovakia can to be further demonstrated by his appointment to the positions of the head of the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences, head of the Department of Historical and Dialectic Marxism and, ultimately, that of 3  Igor Hrušovský, Teória vedy [Theory of Science]. Trnava: Urbánek 1941. Igor Hrušovský, Vývin vedeckého myslenia [Development of Scientific Thinking]. Trnava: Urbánek 1942. 4  Let me briefly comment upon these rather unusual dates of publications. Both books were published during the existence of the Slovak war state. The wartime Slovakia, which came into existence under the Hitler’s pressure in 1939, certainly possesses all the marks of the totalitarian state, including its extremely tragic role in the Holocaust. Yet it is still remarkable that during the very same time books of Hrušovský, a self-proclaimed Marxist sympathizer and a left-leaning intellectual are printed and sold without any restrictions. 5  The journal appears under the title Philosophica Slovaca in 1946 and continues under this name only until 1948. Under the communist regime it is forced to alter its name and content several times, but survives all changes and eventually from 1968 exists under its present-day title Filozofia.

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the Rector of the Comenius University (1950–1953). We will assess his legacy in the concluding parts of this article; it is now time to turn to his philosophy. The scope of our exposition is necessarily limited. First, we only cover the earliest period of Hrušovský’s work, basically limiting ourselves to his first three books and few related articles. We thereby cover a relatively short period from 1935 to 1942. The reason for our choice is a specifically strong influence of the Vienna Circle on his formative years. Also, it is at this early time that Hrušovský’s primary focus is on the philosophy of science. While other topics, such as epistemology or metaphysics are also represented in his writings from this period, the attempt to built firm foundations for sciences clearly dominates during this period. Hrušovský’s interests later diversify and his focus shifts from the philosophy of science to history of philosophy, epistemology and other domains. Finally, unlike other authors (Viceník, Cmorej, Bakoš and others),6 who extensively commented on Hrušovský, my interest is solely to trace his views on social sciences. To my knowledge, this topic has received virtually no interest from scholars. Bringing it forward not only readdresses this neglected area, but also uncovers interesting novel arguments and thereby a relative independence of Hrušovský’s thoughts.

8.3  Philosophy of Biology It is a well-known fact that members of the Vienna Circle and positivists in general, held a great admiration for natural sciences while paying very little or almost no attention to social sciences. Apart from O. Neurath and F. Kaufmann, members of the logical empiricism either viewed social sciences with suspicion or outright rejection. From this perspective, Hrušovský’s position becomes interesting in its own right as he successfully combines contemporary admiration for natural sciences, his expert knowledge of biology and a keen interest in social affairs into a unique theoretical justification for social change. Later on, this justification is transformed into an open acceptance of Marxism and long career of prominent scholar under the Communist regime. Before we explicate Hrušovský’s position on social sciences, let me repeat what other authors have already pointed out. When it comes to natural sciences and their methodology, Hrušovský pledges his alliance to many of the programmatic thesis of the Vienna Circle. Especially his 1941 book reads like a concise and well-informed introduction to positivist philosophy of natural sciences. Hrušovský adheres to all traditional notions of the empiricist vocabulary. He believes in the need for syntactic and semantic analysis of scientific utterances and theories in order to scrutinize their truthfulness, in axiomatization of theories and a pivotal role of logic in theory building. His ontological commitments also mirror those of a prototypical representative 6  See especially the edited volume Vladimír Bakoš et al., Filosofické iniciatívy Igora Hrušovského [Philosophical Initiatives of Igor Hrušovský]. Bratislava: Filosofický ústav SAV 2009. In this volume eight authors comment on a variety of aspects of Hrušovský’s work.

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of the logical empiricism. He takes physical properties to play a foundational role for all natural sciences and readily speaks of the objective reality that is to be d­ iscovered by science. Indeed, his theoretical approach to the natural sciences mimics very much those radiating from Vienna in the preceding years. However, the story turns more interesting when we move from the orthodoxy into less charted territory. It is the field of biology where Hrušovský starts his departure from the received views. His knowledge of biology is formed at the time when Darwinism is under a sustained attack. This is not to say that the evolutionary theory was readily welcome at the time of its inception or in the following decades. Yet the original criticism has been largely ideological, driven by religious beliefs about the immutability of species and the Biblical creationism. However, first decades of the twentieth century brought in various empirical findings that classical Darwinism had difficulties to explain. Very influential in this respect were the findings of a German biologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941). Upon publishing his studies with sea urchin at the turn of the century, the experimental embryologist Driesch became an internationally recognized. His observations on the urchin reproduction and especially the division of cells lead him to adoption of a fairly unorthodox ontology. Let me elaborate. Driesch is puzzled by the following phenomena: when splitting a developing cell from which a single organism is supposed to develop, he observes a development of a fully viable representative of the species from each part of the cell that underwent such division. Each composing part of the divided cell is capable of sustaining development of the complete organism. This observation seemingly violates an identity principle that presupposes an uninterrupted continuation in development between initial and final stages of an organism. Driesch’s research, in which he removed large parts of an egg and even reshuffled blastomeres without any effect on development of an embryo, has been truly revolutionary. When describing the phenomena, he speaks of a “pluripotent” forces within cellular organisms that are endowed with powers to support a development of a variety of distinct roles. Driesch is very careful about his methodology in order to prevent attacks of opponents that might criticize his results as possibly flawed. In the interwar period, has results are widely respected, making him something of a celebrity in intellectual circles across Europe. Driesch’s experimental results lead him to following theoretical speculations. He is strongly convinced that pluripotent nature of eggs must be due to the vitalistic character of living organisms. He embraces Aristotelian notion of entelechy, conceived as a qualitative life force that distinguishes living beings from non-living ones, serving as a governing principle to achieve a sustainable organism. While discredited nowadays, Driesch’s vitalism has to be evaluated in lights of the contemporary situation in biology in the early decades of the twentieth century. Bearers of hereditary processes were unknown, controlled biological experiments were in their infancy and competing hypotheses for an explanation of the very phenomena of cell division did not exist. From this perspective, vitalism might have been the best option. Yet it is not our task to defend Driesch and his philosophical views. Rather, we want to demonstrate the influence of his doctrine on Hrušovský. Importantly, Driesch and his work were not unknown in Czechoslovakia. As early as 1906, an acclaimed philosopher and theoretical biologist Emanuel Rádl

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published a detailed overview of Driesch’s most important results, together with their philosophical interpretation.7 This overview was first published in a journal of Czech medical professionals and soon reappeared and was distributed as a separate booklet. Rádl’s work is interesting in its own right. First of all, it emerges relatively early, because the bulk of Driesch’ work is conducted in the last decade of the 19th and the first two decades of the new centuries. This indicates Rádl’s keen interest in contemporary developments in biology at the time when Driesch’s results are not yet widely known. Furthermore, toward the end of the overview, Rádl presents his rather critical views of vitalism and shows that Driesch’s results might not entail a revival of entelechy. While not offering an alternative explanation of his own, Rádl manages to convey a balanced view that is both fair to Driesch’s experimental results while denying some of its less orthodox philosophical underpinnings. Additionaly, in 1933 both Der Mensch und die Welt (original is published in 1928) and Grundprobleme der Psychologie (original in 1926), authored by Hans Driesch, appear in translations. To complete the list, his book on occultism also reaches the audience in Czechoslovakia. In other words, Driesch is a well-known figure among Czechoslovak scientists and the educated public, so it is very likely that Hrušovský comes to know his work during his studies at the Charles University in Prague. Now, crucially important is not only Hrušovský knowledge of Driesch’s biology and metaphysics, but especially his use of it. Hrušovský repeatedly acknowledges his sympathies for Driesch’s project. In his earliest volume from 1935 he writes: While many thinkers attempt to explain all natural processes from the same physical basis, there is also quite a number of thinkers who believe in pan-vitalism. This tension can only be eliminated by a proof that all biological laws can be deduced from basic physical laws or that general physical laws can follow from some panvitalistic base. There exist yet another view, the one that we hold, where basic laws of both domains are not mutually transformable and they do not follow from each other at all.8 Few remarks are in order. Hrušovský is well aware of the reductionist program and its demands. Yet despite its appeal, he argues for its unsuitability in the case of biological sciences, where observed regularities do not allow for their reduction from a non-biological base. This is obviously vitalism, yet a sophisticated one, worded in the vocabulary of someone clearly influenced by positivism. A reason behind Hrušovský’s adoption of vitalism is to be found in several concurrent debates over the nature of the organic world during his time. One string of the arguments deals with the constituent nature of organisms. This is a debate that Driesch and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), among many others, have been involved in for some time and Hrušovský comments on it on page 34 of his 1935 book. The debate is precisely about a possible dividing line between organic and inorganic  Emanuel Rádl, Hans Driesch: přehled jeho vědecké činnosti [Hans Driesh: An Overview of his Scientific Activities], Praha: Rádl 1906. 8  Hrušovský, Vývin vedeckého myslenia, op. cit. p. 66. See also Hrušovský, Teória vedy, op. cit., part VIII. 7

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world. The argument rests upon the notion of a functional part. In the Aristotelian tradition that Driesch and Hrušovský adopt, an organism has no proper parts, because no part can function separately from the whole, so even some clever combination of individual parts cannot make up a functioning organism. Contrary to that thought, Köhler comes forward with a series of examples from the non-living world where sum of parts possesses powers above those of the parts themselves. If those examples were genuine, the strength of the argument would be destroyed. However, Hrušovský dismisses Köhler’s examples as misguided and remarks in passing on one of the giants of the Vienna Circle: “M. Schlick, for example, understands the concept of the whole extremely mechanistically and inappropriately, judging that, in a proper body, behavior of a part is fully determined by the whole and also conversely, whole exists when its parts are present. However, the nature of biological bodies in their specific dynamics differs from those of invariant systems and we cannot therefore properly speak of a presence of parts.”9 Another string of his arguments builds upon the incorporation of historical notions into the debate. History makes no difference to physical or chemical entities, yet it is crucial for understanding living system: “The nature of organism, being conditioned by its entire history, is significantly different from properties of non-­ living nature”.10 Historical changes constitute an essential part of living beings as both their ontogenetic and phylogenetic changes depend, to a large degree, on their previous interactions that helped to shape up and maintain present and future changes. This is not the case for non-living entities. Their random histories have no effect on their essential properties. In the mind of Hrušovský, both arguments for the divide between living and non-living are affirmed. Therefore, the organic world and its various instantiations have to be treated differently from the physical world.11

8.4  Explorations in Social Sciences Chances of a unified nomological explanation further decrease with the dive into the social domain. For Hrušovský, social sphere is an extension of the biological world and its complex nature precludes a simplified reductive approaches: While the material of inorganic domain of natural sciences is, from among all scientific experiences, most successfully synthesized into a singular theoretical structure and phenomena in the biological domain also gradually appear in a single  Hrušovský, Invencia a vývoj, op. cit., p. 35.  Hrušovský, Vývin vedeckého myslenia, op. cit., p. 67. 11  It has to be pointed out that the defense of vitalism goes strongly against the Vienna Circle manifesto. The notorious Scientific Conception of the World lists vitalism as a movement contrary to unifying tendencies within all sciences. While this shows Hrušovský’s departure from The Circle orthodoxy, as we will demonstrate later on, he insists that his adoption of vitalism has scientific basis. 9

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theoretical framework, results of cultural and social sciences are so far least prone to synthesizing from a single interpretative perspective. This is partly because the theoretical research in these domains is the youngest, but also because of specific polymorphous and fluctuating nature of their material.12 Social domain with its historicity and unpredictability is an unlikely territory for a reductive analysis. If any progress is to be made, the same restrictions that have already been demonstrated in the biological world have to apply. These amount to the use of domain-specific laws that are irreducible to physical or other lower level laws. Non-reductive approaches to special sciences are typical for Hrušovský’s thinking and are indicative of his affinity to certain members of the Circle (Otto Neurath and Felix Kaufmann are the obvious candidates) as opposed to majority of others. In pursuing this particular line of thought, Hrušovský and his Viennese predecessors are pioneering an attitude that is becoming fashionable across philosophy nowadays, with non-reductive approaches to special domains defended in many areas of philosophy. More controversial is Hrušovský’s defense of a separate causal chain in each such a domain. While on one hand his approach is understandable, given foundational differences across various domains, it leaves doors open for the kind of criticism that Descartes and all other defenders of dualistic or pluralistic tendencies have to face. If there are two or more independent causal domains in the world, how is the totality of what there is holding together in a unified fashion? More specifically, given that all living organisms are made up of physical building blocks, how can there be an interaction between different layers within an organism? It is clearly the case that a lack of a chemical substance might lead to a painful bodily experience and, conversely, my volition regularly moves physical objects. If there are incongruent causal chains that operate within living organisms, distinct from those that operate in the physical world, their mutual intersection is virtually impossible to explain. Let us, however, leave this difficulty aside and continue with our ultimate goal of explicating philosophy of social sciences that Hrušovský introduces. The social domain is an extension of the organic world in that former both represents a continuation of the latter, yet at the same time the social sphere also transcends governing biological principles. In a social world, organisms manifest their biological make up by manifesting their life preserving functions. Various ways in which they interact, organize their institutions or communicate indicate their interest in self-­ preservation. However, complex living organisms and human beings especially, also demonstrate functions that are neutral in respect to basic biological constraints of life preservation. Hrušovský claims that these neutral functions are clearly demonstrated in activities such as unrestrained game play and inventive behavior, of which artistic production is the best example. In arts and playful games, humanity reveals its creative potential and it does so regardless of any biological considerations. In this sense, creative activities do not go against the nature, but transcend its limitations.

12

 Ibid., p. 80.

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If there exists a gap between biological and social domains, can we apply some normative approach to the social that would take biology as its starting point? Hrušovský believes this both can and should be done. While social life outstrips biological limitations, it essentially preserves some of its foundational characteristics. It is important to emphasize that non-biologically grounded activities, such as art or playfulness are neutral to the biological story, not contrary to it. Biological constraints are still a major determining factor. We have already shown how biology invites holism and Hrušovský believes holistic principles should be applied to social affairs as well: Today, when a high productivity of ever more perfect machines, combined with the ever more disproportionate division of revenue, both lead freedom of economic interests ad absurdum, it is becoming quite obvious that the real stipulation of these interests can only be societal. No holistic interest can be a result of interests that are particular and biased.13 While this quote remains a bit cryptic, it does indicate that individual and societal conflicts have to be solved by siding with the society. Complex living creatures are part of the organic world and as such they serve a role that was assigned to them by nature. Acting individually, without regards for social needs, is a violation of that role. While such violations are possible, they disregard our ancestral determining forces and are contrary to the natural order. Emphasizing individualism in the society is parallel to accentuating a part of an organism over the whole organism. As we have seen, in any living being a function of its parts cannot be separated from functions of all the other components. In the social domain, an overemphasis on free action allows individuals to ignore interests of others, thus ruining the very society that makes their existence possible. Therefore, it should not be surprising that Hrušovský advocates limits on unrestrained freedom and encourages socialistic approaches to social affairs. It is important to stress that his admiration for socialism and an introduction of a specific control over society is not a random political choice that just reflects some of his unmotivated preferences. Instead, it stems directly from his scientific methodology that he extends from biological sciences to the social domain. In doing so he is faithful to the positivist message, advocating a scientific approach to solution of all world problems. His scientism, demonstrated in the following quote that defends Driesch: “Hypothesis of a holistic and individuating variable, that was called entelechy, was a move critical and scientific”,14 suggests an unhindered adoption of the Vienna Circle program. As we have already indicated, vitalism might have well been the strongest theory at his time, and by its adoption Hrušovský follows the best scientific practice of his era. We might only speculate that different historical conditions and a presence of alternative biological explanations might have led him to an adoption of a very different biological and social theory. For a faithful believer in scientism, and we see no reason to doubt his scientistic creed, a powerful scientific argument might have very well caused a change in

13 14

 Hrušovský, Invencia a vývoj, op. cit., p. 57.  Ibid., p. 25.

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his mind. Current mechanistic explanations of egg division and a related rejection of entelechy certainly do not lend strong support for holistic considerations both in biology and social studies. In an alternative climate within experimental biology Hrušovský’s position could have been radically different from the actually adopted one. Eventually, evidence in favor of mechanistic explanations in embryology emerged decades later. However, Hrušovský was already interested in other areas of philosophy, so we do not know what his reaction might have been. Nevertheless, it is clear that it is his faith in science that makes him a socialist, as only socialism openly addresses those kinds of worries that he believes are the most pertinent for living systems  – their holistic nature and historicity. Socialism offers means for systemic treatment of social ills that are in his eyes analogous to scientific solutions to puzzles in cellular biology. Crucially, his later open acceptance of Marxism, which coincides with a changing political climate in Czechoslovakia after the WWII, should by no means be understood as a case of personal opportunism. Instead, his adoption of leftist ideology stems from his scientific outlook and an admiration for methodology developed in interwar Vienna.

8.5  A Short Detour Before concluding, let me make a brief comment on some claims in the literature on Hrušovský that I find somewhat controversial. Hrušovský is a well-known figure among Slovak philosophers and there is a relatively small scholarship on his work, which remains completely unknown to the outside world.15 From what we’ve seen, there has not been a systematic treatment of his early works and certainly not of the issues that we have introduced. Still, our own assessment of early works of Hrušovský leads us to make claims that are contrary to what appears in the dedicated literature. In their respective works, Milan Zigo and Jozef Viceník ascribe to him pluralism with regards to his Viennese sources. Viceník16 approvingly quotes Zigo’s17 claim that Hrušovský “instinctively works with ideas that belong to various phases of neopositivist philosophy all at once”. These authors seem to imply that he cherry-picks on his Viennese sources and mixes a variety of different strings within his positivist inspirations. From a careful study of his early works, we extract a more consistent picture. While his general philosophy of science is certainly sourced from a wider spectrum of Vienna Circle members, a single thread of positivism inspires his particular interests. Given his concentration on biology, social affairs and socialism, Otto Neurath seems to be his closest source. He has a keen interest in Neurath, as witnessed by his brief introduction of the project on the unity of  Mostly because of the linguistic constraints as all of the material is written in Slovak.  Jozef Viceník, “Teória vedy” [Theory of Science], in: Vladimír Bakoš et al., Filozofické iniciatívy Igora Hrušovského, op. cit., p. 48. 17  Milan Zigo, “Hrušovského výklad vývinu vedeckého myslenia” [Hrušovský’s Explanation of Scientific Thought], in: Filozofia 53, 1998, pp. 559–566. The quote is on the page 562.

15 16

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s­ cience.18 Another name that needs to be mentioned is that of F. Kaufmann, who alone works on social sciences in the Circle. Kaufmann is cited by Hrušovský in his second book.19 In this respect, Hrušovský pluralism is not so varied. While aware of diversity inside the Circle, his work develops topics that are initiated mostly by Neurath and his branch of positivism. Rather than compiling his writings on a range of sources, Hrušovský prefers a single track within a very pluralistic field. Another concern that we would like to address is the worry that Cmorej and Viceník20 discuss. The worry is explicitly mentioned by Cmorej21 when he claims that the nature of Hrušovský’s work demonstrates that he is not an analytic philosopher. Rather than analyzing concepts and inquiring into the nature of meanings of employed terms, Cmorej argues that Hrušovský is engaged in synthetizing work. He synthetizes results of others and puts them into a coherent whole. Hrušovský therefore should not be regarded as a proper analytic philosopher. We suggest that this judgment is a very restrictive one. From its inception, the term analytic did not necessarily denote an adherence to a precisely formulated methodology. Instead, it picked up a certain style of doing philosophy, targeting certain domains such as language, science or mind, eventually taking over all philosophical areas. It is its emphasis on detailed investigations, dislike of large speculative systems and a close affinity to science that makes one’s philosophy analytic. In this perspective, Hrušovský clearly is the member of the analytic movement. The question of one’s categorization is, obviously, not a very important one, yet we worry that an overemphasis on the employed method might lead to an exclusion of some of the famous figures of the past from this presumed tradition. It is far from clear whether people like J.L. Austin, C.D. Broad or R. Chisholm had been utilizing the paradigmatic analytic methods in their influential works at the time of Hrušovský’s active philosophical life. Yet undoubtedly these philosophers are part of the analytic movement. They have close to zero readership and very few followers among the continental branch of philosophy. On the contrary, their work is closely studied and developed in the analytic camp. Hrušovský might not have dissected meaning and his interests kept changing with time, but his early works show all defining marks of the philosophy that has got Vienna among its birthplaces.

 Igor Hrušovský, “Otto Neurath a vedecká syntéza“, in: Prúdy 22, 6, 1938, pp. 383–388.  Hrušovský, Vývin vedeckého myslenia, op. cit., citation is on the page 48. 20  Jozef Viceník, “Poznámky k názorom na rozvoj logiky a metodológie vied na Slovensku v rokoch 1918–1948” [Notes on opinions on development of logic and methodology of sciences in Slovakia in 1918–1948], in: Jozef Viceník and Pavel Cmorej, K dejinám logiky a metodológie vied na Slovensku a v Čechách [Toward a history of logic and methodology of science in Slovakia and the Czech lands]. Bratislava: Iris 2002, pp. 35–39. 21  Pavel Cmorej, “Od teorie vedy k Problémom noetiky“, in: Bakoš et al. Filozofické inicitívy Igora Hrušovského, op. cit. pp. 110–132, esp. section I. 18 19

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8.6  Hrušovský’s Legacy Let us conclude by briefly stating how we perceive Hrušovský’s legacy. We believe this legacy is multilayered, combining significant philosophical achievement with an important personal impact on the local intellectual life. As we have been attempting to show, contributions of Hrušovský are self-standing and interesting in their own right. They present the most striking exemplar of the Vienna Circle influence on Czechoslovak philosophy. In this sense, they break the myth of an unbridgeable divide between German and Czechoslovak intelligentsia of which only the former was aware of new Viennese philosophical inspirations. Hrušovský is not only familiar with and skillful with uses of the output of Circle personalities, he is also using it in a novel and inspiring ways. If Vienna Circle has an ally in Czechoslovakia, it is definitely Hrušovský. We should also mention Hrušovský influence on a generation of philosophers without whom contemporary Slovak philosophical life would not exist. Leading figures of the first fully matured Slovak philosophical generation, such as V. Filkorn, J. Viceník, V. Černík, A. Riška, P. Cmorej, or J. Šebestík, some of who have achieved international recognition, are all students of Igor Hrušovský. Their influence over current philosophical life in Slovakia is unquestionable and their beginnings can be traced directly to the only early Czechoslovak heir to the positivist tradition. Similarly, autonomous Slovak philosophical vocabulary is largely due to Hrušovský’s influence. In his books he utilizes a fully developed terminology and cleverly translates new expressions that have no precedence in any previous works. When reading his early works now, one cannot but be amazed of how modern his expressions sound and how well suited they are for the uneasy task. His language is precise and tailored to make his writings clear and straightforward in the best practice of analytic philosophy. Even in this respect Hrušovský is a perfect recipient of the tradition that is connected to the Vienna Circle.

Part II

The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia – Memoirs

Chapter 9

On Hania Frank Nina Holton

Hania Frank called her husband Philippushka. It was an expression of endearment—Philipp and Hania were devoted to each other. She always listened to what he said with interest, and he always smiled and enjoyed what she said—no matter how fantastic or outlandish. But Philippushka has also another meaning: Babushka in Russian means little grandmother, and Philippushka can perhaps be taken to mean little grandfather. To be sure, Philipp was 10 years older than Hania—he was born in Vienna in 1884, and Hania in Zamostin, Poland, in 1894; but that would hardly make him a Philippushka in the literal sense. So it has to be taken as an endearment. But he did look much older than Hania, with his bald head and short stature. And then of course she had been his student at the University in Prague, where he was professor of physics. The report that Hania had studied physics is not what came to mind when one met her, got to know her, and heard her speak. In all the years that I knew her, not one word of science or philosophy came from her lips. Yet, Hania understood much of what Professor Frank wrote and spoke. I shall give you an example later. Hania was lovely when she was a young woman, and remained a lively and cheerful presence throughout most of her life; she was an unforgettable woman. Hania’s liveliness, her sense of fun and optimism must have sustained her husband always and particularly when they were in the United States. Hania spoke several languages: Polish, her native language, but also Czech and Russian, and of course her own brand of German, which those who were privileged to hear it never forgot. This, plus the originality of her fantasizing—shall we say— could sometimes be quite astonishing.

N. Holton (*) Jefferson Lab, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_9

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Let me give you an example: When my husband first brought me to visit the Franks, Hania became very excited. She threw up her arms, embraced me, and exclaimed: “Ninotshka, you are the famous dancer, and you have come!” “No,” I answered, “you must have somebody else in mind. I am not a dancer. I took a lot of dancing lessons, but that is all.” “No, no,” she said, “I would never forget you. You were the tall, famous dancer that came from Greece to St. Petersburg. I remember it exactly, it was 1851. I saw you with my own eyes.” When I looked over to Professor Frank, he seemed quite unperturbed. “You see,” he said—this is how she always started—“during the times of the Tzars they had not only their own wonderful dancers, but many ballet companies from Europe visited St. Petersburg.” Several years later, when our first son, Thomas, was born, Hania came to visit me. She looked at my tiny baby and said sadly, “Ninotshka, I know you love this Gerry, and I know you love this Tommy, but what are you doing with your life? You are a dancer, you are a great and famous dancer.” At another time, she came to see me when I had a cold and laryngitis—I could hardly say a word. Hania picked up an Indian drum which was somewhere in the room and commanded, “Sing, Ninotshka, sing, you are not hoarse, you are not hoarse, you have no cold, sing with me,” and she began to sing and dance around me. My friend, Inge Hoffmann, originally from Vienna, who had wonderful red hair when she was a young woman, told me that Hania, who didn’t know her, stopped her on the street in Cambridge and said, “You look very interesting. I would like to know you,” and on the spot invited her to come to her apartment on a given afternoon for Kipferl and Kafé. In a letter of May 1962 to Professor Frank, the famous Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley wrote: “You have been my ghost thinker,” and “your precious Frau has been our folk dance instructor” (meaning for himself and Mrs. Shapley). The physicist and journalist Jeremy Bernstein, the author of Hitler’s Nuclear Club, who was a student and great admirer of Philipp Frank, told us that he telephoned the Frank apartment 1 day. Hania answered the phone, and in her what he calls “monumental inimitable accent” said, “We are here singing English folk songs. Philipp has gone away.” At another time, she told Bernstein that Philipp “knew a great deal, for a physicist.” What might she have meant by “he knew a great deal, for a physicist”? Perhaps in his Prague years, Frank taught courses in philosophy of science also, which she may have taken. I don’t know. And I am not sure anyone else knows. It would be good for someone in Prague to search the records at the University and find out. There is a very interesting biography of Franz Kafka by Ernst Pawel, called The Nightmare of Reason—A Life of Franz Kafka.1 Somewhere in the book he writes about the brilliant sisters Berta and Ida Freund, who were among the first women in

 Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason — A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux 1984.

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Prague to fight their way into the university, but were only allowed to audit certain courses. So, coming back to Hania, perhaps she too audited certain courses. But we don’t know. I would now like to show you a few slides: 1. Here is Hania in 1912 at the age of 18. She is very attractive, even beautiful with her high Slavic cheekbones, broad forehead and sensuous mouth. Her hair is dark. But as the years go by, her hair gets lighter, blonder, blond—which happens, doesn’t it? As a sculptor, I must say that she ages well—as you will see. Her high cheekbones are like strong armatures which hold up the skin and prevent it from sagging too much as she ages.

2. Here she is in 1920 with her family: her father, A. Gerson; her sister-in-law, who will die during the war in one of the German concentration camps; her niece, Irena Fraydas; her brother Isaac Avramovitch Gerson, who somehow ended up in Moscow, I don’t know how. I recently spoke to one of Hania’s nieces in the United States—May Fraydas—who told me that Hania came from a very large (many brothers and sisters), well-to­do and cultivated family.

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3. Hania in Prague, 1930, with Professor Frank behind her, with mustache. In all the photos I have seen of him he is bald. He also had a slight limp from an injury from a brief encounter with an autobus. For some reason, Professor Frank rarely bothered to clean his eyeglasses. Maybe he felt that he saw enough as is. But on the other hand, every now and then, one does run the risk of walking in the way of a bus. I don’t know who the other people in the picture are. In front is a gentleman ready to strum his guitar. Hania looks pensive—that is how one is supposed to look in a posed photo. But after the photographer has left, she will no doubt break into a song.

4. Prague, 1930—Hania, a handsome lady.

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5. Prague, 1930—with Professor Frank.

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6. And here is a photo taken by friends just a few years later. A serious Hania. On the edge of the slide it says, “At home with Professor and Mrs. Philipp Frank, Vienna Coffee House, Cambridge, Mass. style.”2 Ah, to find a good coffee house, or even a bad coffee house, in Cambridge, Mass! In Prague in the time of Kafka there were apparently hundreds of different cafés catering to every conceivable taste. Ernst Pawel writes, “They served as nerve centers of its culture, politics and crime.” I can’t imagine criminals meeting in a coffeehouse, but it was probably an inexpensive place to meet, and it was heated in the winter. But the Café Arco in Prague became one of the great literary centers of the Continent. At its peak in 1912, Pawel writes, “Its regulars included most of Prague’s artistic and literary elite: actors, painters, German-Jewish writers, also Czech and German avant guard writers.” Karl Kraus, the brilliant but fanatic, destructive and self-hating Jewish journalist, who founded the journal Die Fackel, made a poisonous attack on what he called “the Arconauts,” and immortalized the Café Arco by writing: “Es werfelt und brodet und kafkat und kischt.” (Egon Erwin Kisch was a schoolmate of Kafka, and became a well known journalist and champion of the left.) Kraus accused all these writers of besmirching the purity of the German language, of which writes Pawel, “he was the self-appointed guardian and high priest.” By the way, Kraus also accused Heinrich Heine, Herzl and Freud of perverting the German language. So to come back to Cambridge and coffeehouses, in vain did Professor Frank look around for someone to talk with, or at least somewhere he could quietly sit and read a newspaper. No, there were no newspapers provided in the downtrodden cafeterias, the Hayes Bickford or the Albiani, which he frequented in Cambridge. But at least they didn’t mind an elderly man with a limp sitting by the window, sipping a brew they called coffee, hoping someone would join him for a lively conversation, like in Vienna or Prague. So the Vienna Coffeehouse—Cambridge-style, was really at the Franks’ apartment. We visited them often and there were always other people. Hania served cool drinks or coffee and wonderful Viennese pastry, which was made at the Window Shop in Cambridge, run by elderly Austrian refugee ladies who made everything from Gugelhupf to Vanilla Kipferl, Linzertorte, Dobostorte, etc. Hania was always very lively—she loved company and so did Professor Frank. “You see,” he would say—and then he would begin to tell stories apropos any subject, jokes, reminiscences, and in all the years that we knew him I had never heard him repeat himself, as most people do. He was a veritable encyclopedia of reminiscences, stories, associations. Hania clearly enjoyed his stories. In the photos I have shown you, Hania looked well dressed, but when we knew her she dressed more folklorically, with loose swinging skirts and blouses. Her hair was now streaked with grey, but at other times it had a blonder tinge.  The photo is not available. (Ed.)

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I mentioned earlier that Hania understood what her husband wrote and when he lectured in public, she was often his perceptive sounding board. For example, in 1929 in Prague, at a meeting co-sponsored by the German Physical Society and by the Ernst Mach Association, which was the legal organization of the Vienna Circle, Prof. Frank wanted to give a talk on the topic “Epistemology of the Exact Sciences,” even though this was not to the liking of the German Physical Society, as Philipp Frank wrote in his book Modern Science and Its Philosophy, which he dedicated to Hania. Some of his friends also cautioned him, because German scientists knew little of philosophy of science, except, as Frank writes: “They had some sentimental ties to Kantianism.”3 Hania, in her role as sounding board, said to her husband after the lecture, “It was weird to listen. It seemed to me as if the words fell into the audience like drops into a well so deep that one cannot hear the drops striking bottom. Everything seemed to vanish without a trace.” It feels strange hearing myself quoting this, as it was written in English. I wonder in what language it was said. I never knew in what language Hania and Philipp talked to each other when alone. I spoke earlier about the two sisters Berta and Ida Freund. Berta married a rich and eccentric man named Fanta, who owned the medieval Unicorn Pharmacy on Old Town Square in Prague. After her marriage, Berta Fanta’s salon became the brilliant meeting place of a cosmopolitan elite which in later years included Einstein and Frank. Franz Kafka also turned up from time to time when urged by Max Brod. But he really disliked going there because Berta Fanta’s Tuesdays-at-home evenings were like post- graduate, in-depth studies of Hegel and Kant, and that was not exactly in Kafka’s interest. When Hania was a student in Prague, she apparently got to know Kafka and had several rendezvous with him, as she told Jeremy Bernstein whom I quoted before. I mentioned earlier that we were often invited for Jause at the Franks. But from time to time we also invited them to visit us. One evening—it must have been 1950 or 1951—we had a large party with friends of our age, and Hania and Philipp came as sort of guests of honor. In the 1950s, everyone in our circle of friends read Kafka, and on that particular evening Kafka was widely discussed. Hania pricked up her ears, and her eyes turned large with astonishment. “Kafka?” she shouted to someone sitting on the floor near her. “How do you know about Kafka?” The young man so addressed seemed rather embarrassed and replied: “You see, Madame, Franz Kafka is one of the greatest writers of this century. Everybody knows his work.” Hania listened with astonishment, then she turned to her husband and said, “Philippushka, what have we done with Franzl’s letters to me?” “You see,” Philippushka answered in his usual unperturbed way, “they were packed in our lift to be sent from Prague in 1938, and the lift never arrived.”

3  Philipp Frank, Modern Science and Its Philosophy. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1949, p. 50.

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Forever after, our friends knew that in our salon they met a wild-eyed lady who knew Franz Kafka and to whom Kafka wrote letters. Many years later, in a conversation with Jeremy Bernstein, Hania told him that she did not think that Kafka was the most brilliant writer she knew in Prague. I wonder whom she might have had in mind? As I said earlier, Hania spoke a number of languages—of course, her native Polish, Czech, Russian, and her inimitable German and English. From Prof. Bayara Manusevitch, who taught Russian literature at Harvard, I learned that Hania was a great favorite among the Russian intellectuals in Cambridge. She was lively and fun to be with. She spoke an excellent Russian and felt at home among them. They all loved Philipp, and they even Russified his name to Philipp Ignatievich. Hania was close to Bayara Manusevitch’s mother, to whom she expressed her fear that if Philipp were to die, she couldn’t live alone. She would do anything to live among one of her Russian friends, even be a domestic, cook, anything! There was a sense of foreboding in her fears. By the mid-sixties, Professor Frank, now 82 years old, became quite often confused and forgetful, but always tried to be cheerful. Hania, however, was in very poor shape. Bedridden, she suffered from a variety of gerontological problems. Both could no longer be left alone in their apartment. In September 1965, through the efforts of some of their close friends and their physician, they were both placed in a Cambridge nursing home. Professor Frank died there on July 21, 1966. Hania was taken by her nephew, Stan Fraydas, to a nursing home in Freeport, NY, close to where Mr.Fraydas and his family lived. Hania died December 27, 1967 at age 73. They are both buried in the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, at Azalea Path. May they rest in peace. Acknowledgment  I would like to acknowledge the help and information given to me during my research by the following: Jeremy Bernstein, Catherine Chvany, Robert S. Cohen, May Fraydas, Margaret Freeman, Inge Hoffmann, Bayara Manusevich, Magda Tisza, and the Harvard University Archives.

Chapter 10

Major Contacts with Stimulating Initiatives of Analytical Philosophy and the Vienna Circle Ladislav Tondl

10.1  Introductory Notes In this country philosophy had been cultivated for a long time as an explication and very rarely as a process of fructification of the ideas that had already been expressed or written, as a repeated journey along the path traveled by other, better educated and undoubtedly wiser men. Nobody could object to that practice, as long as we try to find the limits, pitfalls and possible improvements of those journeys or other, more perfect and suitable paths and trends; as long as we also try to find new goals, procedures, devices and methods. Among the first stimulating contacts with the subject that can be comprehensively described as methodological themes figured my working and personal meetings with the colleagues of a group established at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Charles University in the early 1950s under the name “Cabinet of General Natural Science” and headed by the then associate professor O.  Zich. There were others who were involved in its activities, namely A. Dratvová, M. Katětov and some other researchers. I myself was impressed by the work of M. Katětov on the logical construction of mathematics in which he singled out the works of R. Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle. Shortly after my habilitation at the Faculty of Philosophy (1953) I was sent to a conference on what were called Lenin’s philosophical notes, a gathering organized in Warsaw by the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference was also addressed by the then Chairman of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Professor T. Kotarbiński. His lecture focused on Lenin’s example of what was then billed as a “wonderful demonstration of dialectic“, notably the sentence “Zhuchka iest sobaka” (in Czech translation “Alík je pes” which, loosely translated into English, reads “Bingo is a dog”). Kotarbiński agreed with Lenin’s characteristic claiming that the singular is also universal and that, on the contrary, the universal is the singular too. He followed his L. Tondl (Deceased) (*) The Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_10

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affirmative and appreciative comment by adding that he would like to supplement and extend Lenin’s note by referring to the fact that what is also involved is the connection of the nominal and verbal components, the connection of a proper noun and a common noun, the concatenation of an element and a set, a part and a whole, and that, therefore, syntactic connection or concatenation does and can have a number of different functions. I went to speak to Professor Kotarbiński during a conference break and conveyed to him my thanks; I mainly thanked him because I now did understand the meaning and purpose of his supplementary notes. From that first meeting on I was regularly invited to seminars and minor conferences also attended by leading lights, adherents and supporters of analytical philosophy in Europe. These included A. J. Ayer, who later sent me his book Language, Truth and Logic, R. Aron who gave me, already in Warsaw, his book L’Opium des intellectuels, a critique of the fundamentalist ideologies. When, after my forced departure from the Charles University, I had found decent employment and work in the Institute for the Theory of Information, I wrote a letter to Professor R. Carnap, asking him if he could kindly arrange for me some possible contacts and also make available his own works. This correspondence continued until the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In his letters Carnap formulated his personal opinions, criticism and sympathy as well as condemnation of some international events (for instance the assassination of President Kennedy), admiration for some phenomena or programmes of the so-called “Prague Spring”, admiration and respect for T.  G. Masaryk etc. During the 1960s I received from several American publishing centers anthologies or collections devoted to the philosophy and methodology of science, particularly the works of H.  Feigl, A.  Pap, H. Reichenbach, C. G. Hempel and other former members of the Vienna Circle who lived and worked in the United States. Still in the 1960s I was invited to become a member of several editorial boards, both book editions (Theory and Decision Library) as well as magazines (Erkenntnis). I was also invited to take an active part in some editions, which resulted in the publication of two books in a series issued by the Boston University, a number of contributions to book publications on the philosophy and methodology of science (these were books dealing with the subjects of information and prediction in science, scientific thinking, the philosophy of technology) plus encyclopedias explaining systems and management concepts and principles. Availing ourselves of the freer and more liberal atmosphere prevailing in the country in the 1960s, me, my colleague and friend K.  Berka and researchers active in the field of logic published Czech translations of the works of some philosophers and thinkers from the orbit of the Vienna Circle and analytical philosophy, particularly R.  Carnap, A.  Tarski, B. Russell and some others. We did this in an effort to acquaint the Czech scientific and academic community with these works in a more detailed fashion. In addition to logicians these methodological initiatives were also supported by the representatives and followers of the Prague traditions of linguistic structuralism. Back in 1955, in an atmosphere of sheer intellectual dark times, this country saw the publication of a Czech translation of A Short Philosophical Dictionary which precisely labeled whom to acknowledge or at least tolerate, whom and what to

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reject, and also whom and how to abuse. Seen in this context, great credit is due to the efforts and endeavors evolved by some medical specialists from the Faculty of Medicine of the Charles University keen on getting to know more about those condemned “bourgeois initiatives” that had been introduced by the pioneers of the theory of information, cybernetics, semantics, the theory of games and the theory of decision-making. This eventually gave rise to seminars, explications and debates that were originally held in the evenings in the faculty rooms in Prague’s Kateřinská Street. A totally private and personal event was the visit to Prague by the founder of cybernetics Norbert Wiener who came to the Czechoslovak capital as a tourist. He had shortly stayed in Prague a long time before the war, during his brief study stay with local German mathematicians. His father L. Wiener, a Professor at Harvard University, was a good acquaintance of T. G. Masaryk. I came to understand and appreciate the wisdom of some Czech universally educated and scientifically oriented medical doctors not only during discussions about new and stimulating trends in science but also during countless debates and conversations in the critical period of the so-called Prague Spring. When Professor MUDr. O. Starý, the then Chancellor of the Charles University, told me early in the summer of 1968 that I had been nominated for the post of regular professor, he stressed that the university should represent all the major philosophical trends, and he added that he had in mind not only what was then described as “neopositivism”, but also phenomenology and reform Marxism and, therefore, also professorships for J. Patočka and K. Kosík. As for the excesses and major turnarounds in academic posts and interventions of the official and monopoly ideology, these included both different forms of repudiation and condemnation as well as the practice of lavishing uncritical praise and kowtowing to those who served the monopoly power and its ideology, particularly its ideological arbiters and judges. I myself experienced such an act of ostracism in the late 1950s at a large university assembly prepared and stage-managed by two employees of what was known here as the “Vokovice Sorbonne” (at that time a quite common and ironic nickname for the political university attached to the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party and based in Vokovice, a Prague district). Held at the Faculty of Philosophy, this was a gathering of Prague philosophers and scientists from related disciplines. Those who wanted to keep their posts had to express their views in public, naturally kowtowing to the powers that be. Actual opposition to the ready-made “judgment of conviction” of the “culprit” was expressed solely by two people present, Professor O. Zich and one employee of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences. In retaliation, the then Department of Logic, whose employees had refused to take part in this public character assassination, was abolished as a punishment. My arrival in the Institute for the Theory of Information meant for me leaving the atmosphere of control by fear and entering a lively and fruitful climate of searching for new ideas and lively discussions, which considerably changed my personal situation. The then Director of the Institute and Scientific Secretary of the Academy of Sciences J. Kožešník gave me an amicable welcome, naturally only at our face-to-­ face meeting: “Look, Jan Hus was burnt at the stake and you can quietly work here”.

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I could link up to the famous work by R. Carnap on the semantic theory of information, a study he co-authored with his pupil and assistant Y. Bar-Hillel. (The latter then invited me in 1964 to give lectures and attend a conference at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem of which he was a professor. Later on we met at a philosophical congress in Vienna in 1968 where he chaired one of the congress panels.) A successful and stimulating intellectual milieu at the institute was also promoted by the fact that the subjects of the theory of information, information processes as well as decision-making procedures are known to possess many general and hence also philosophical dimensions. This involves not only the fact that the measure of information may be grasped and also conceived as negative entropy, that decision-­ making may be viewed as a search for, evaluation and selection of possible and acceptable alternatives, that the well-known statement (unjustifiably attributed to A. Einstein), that “God doesn’t play dice” does not actually hold, and that it is not always possible or necessary to seek “hidden parameters”. A summarization of some of my results concerning the possibilities of using semantic information is the study “Some Methods of Information Evaluations of Scientific Results”, which appeared in the journal Computers and Artificial Intelligence, No. 5, 1986, pp. 185–194. This study was also reprinted in an extended (American) version of the book Problems of Semantics, published by the Boston University, as well as in the Czech version published by the Charles University in 2006. Needless to say, the initiatives stimulated and promoted by different trends and centers of analytical philosophy can hardly be confined only to the intellectual hubs in such cities as Vienna, Prague and Berlin, or the two other cities involved: Lvov and Warsaw; they are, indeed, connected with many other names of the leading thinkers in the Anglo-Saxon world, among whom we cannot omit such names as B.  Russell, A.  J. Ayer, the Austrian L. von Bertalanffy and L.  Wittgenstein, the Finnish thinker G. H. von Wright and many others, traditionally classified rather as “soloists”. Nevertheless, even science and philosophy is, just like music, the product of outstanding soloists, especially if they have their pupils and followers.

10.2  M  ajor Contributions and Stimuli of the Main Currents of Analytical Philosophy When assessing and analyzing the key results achieved by the leading trends and currents of analytical philosophy, we can hardly avoid asking which significant and stimulating findings those currents have brought to contemporary scientific thinking, and whether or how they have contributed to the advancement of scientific methodologies. Naturally, this does not concern only that single and particularly specific trend, which the Vienna Circle undoubtedly was and still is. When mentioning the sum-total of sources and breeding grounds of major new initiatives and stimuli, we should also, quite definitely, refer to the centers and groups of the ­so-­called Lvov (Lemberg)  – Warsaw School, the Prague linguistic structuralism

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groups, as well as areas of literature and aesthetic. One could also consider factoring in other initiative currents of all the Central European countries whose leading lights were forced to leave their homes and go to Western Europe and, in most cases, further west across the Atlantic to America. (An interesting insight into this particular shift of intellectual initiatives is given in the book written by R. Mattessich and called Instrumental Reasoning and Systems Methodology, published in the series Theory and Decisions Library in 1978.) The conceptual notions and methodological procedures associated with the currents and trends of analytical philosophy are connected with a number of major accents on the cognitive and decision-making processes applied in the intellectual spheres of human actions in education and in social, economic and technological development. The following accents and procedures are involved in particular: –– accents on analytical approach requiring a more profound insight into the genesis of knowledge, into components, elements and parts of larger wholes, into systems or complexes bound up with concatenation of partial and, frequently, also diverse elements; –– the necessity of accurate linguistic formulation, conceptual devices and the structure of linguistic performance; –– attention devoted to concepts, to the generation as well as use of knowledge, including appropriation, confirmation and application of knowledge, hence those information processes connected with knowledge and cognition, with verification and application processes; –– specification of requirements for the subjects of action in the spheres of knowledge acquisition, verification and utilization. In actual fact, the analytical approach represents both an old tradition and heritage of man’s oldest steps in science. Man has always been curious to know what was the stuff Mother Nature used to create its works, he has learnt to distinguish elements or partial components as well as manners and forms of their concatenation that lead to the formation of new structures guaranteeing the genesis of not only new wholes but also new properties and desirable functions. It was Newton who distinguished corpora and vires impressae, their status (quiescendi vel movendi) and thus also the structure generated by concatenating the nominal phrase and verbal phrase. In addition to the analytical approach, of great importance for both communication and the use of linguistic performance as well as for the wide-ranging and multifarious field of practical actions is connection, whether we have in mind connection of real elements, states, processes or functions. New structures, wholes or complexes created by a specific and also admissible and practicable type of concatenation of originally separate elements, components or future parts can ensure a new meaning or a new function of a statement. (In these contexts, R. Carnap pointed out the connection of words and expressions which he described as “meaning postulates”.) The analytical approach is important not only for a better way of learning, understanding and explaining events, processes and changes occurring around and inside us, in our lives and our actions. Therefore, it constitutes a key and stimulating factor

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of human actions, our own intentions, wishes and target orientations of all forms and types of cognitive and creative pursuits. This naturally also encompasses the spheres of creating and utilizing the world of our constructs and, therefore, using the realm of our artifacts. That also explains why all the centers, groups and schools of analytical philosophy and analytical thinking devoted considerable attention to communication processes, to language and to linguistic performance. After all, it is precisely in these contexts that the sentence from Wittgenstein’s famous Tractatus “Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” holds. The subjects of debates, topics of interest and concerns examined in the discussion centers of analytical philosophy, the philosophy of science, the foundations of mathematics and modern mathematical logic gave rise to a climate conducive to integration and cooperation of different scientific disciplines in an effort to search for bridges and other common areas of what were formerly strictly divided branches and disciplines, namely different forms of expansion of mathematics, numerical, quantum and probabilistic approaches to different spheres which had previously been the domain of strictly verbal manifestations. I myself felt this very strongly when I had been banished from the philosophy and humanities community, disciplines then dominated by the monopoly of the only permitted and infallible ideology, and when I later found warm reception and acknowledgement in the exact spheres of mathematics and technology. Therefore, I welcomed an invitation extended to me by the editorial board of the then popular Czech periodical Literární noviny to write “something” about the relationship among the exact, natural scientific and humanities branches. My essay bearing the Latin title Humanum et naturale was published in Literární noviny in the summer of 1965. A similar spirit of mutual relations and respect prevailed already in the discussions on cybernetics and the related thematic fields, held at the Faculty of Medicine, and later, during debates and paper presentations organized by the Cybernetics Committee, which then transformed itself into a respected scientific society. The relatively numerous participation and involvement of medical specialists proved to be quite remarkable and undoubtedly also highly useful for such discussions and subjects under scrutiny. The topics and focus of research in analytical philosophy were very close to – and had, for all practical purposes, affected – the origin and development of the field which used to be described as the “science on science” or research into the relations between science, technology and society. Standing in the limelight was also the sphere characterized as “science policy”, a domain which was also connected with the orientation of goals, directions and preferences of the subjects that were well supported and grant-funded. This thematic field developed comparatively quickly in the 1960s as an important international topic, backed up by international organizations, for instance the UNESCO.  But these concerns and tendencies have come out into the open in a more pronounced fashion after the establishment of the European Union. Support has been given primarily to the exchange of respected professors, especially for the purpose of postgraduate studies and, hence, for the training of Ph.D. students and budding scientists. These trends have also confirmed the need of having a universally available international

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language of science. It has now become a matter of course in many European countries that higher levels of studies, always attended by many foreign students and applicants, are conducted in English. Publishing one’s own results and primarily publishing them in internationally respected book series and journals has grown to be an inevitable – and now also the only much-acclaimed – prerequisite for the acquisition of a specific level of professional qualification and associated competence, and for the achievement of worthwhile scientific results in all spheres of science and their international recognition. (In these contexts, we speak of the socalled peer reviews. Also membership in editorial boards of such journals or book series is perceived as a considerably great and internationally highly regarded acknowledgement.) A major trait – as well as a useful advantage – of analytical thinking and reasoning is what can be termed as opposition to perceiving the world solely in the light of one’s own resources, one’s own perception and hearing. In actual fact, virtually all of us are condemned to moving within such barriers or – to put it more aptly – limitations. What is still worse: such restrictions are co-generated by the fundamentalist ideology. Without any doubt whatsoever, one may claim that each of us has sometimes met and had to work with people suffering the disease of self-confidence in their own opinions and attitudes, people for whom the only true facts are those they know themselves. That is also why it is crucial to stimulate what we usually call curiosity, an urge to see and know more and better. At the same time, it holds that when submitting proposals, when reasoning and when evaluating our own steps, namely steps of intellectual and material nature, we lack any a priori guarantees of anticipated consequences and impacts. To put it in other words, it is vital to incorporate into our thinking such steps within a broader scope, and not only in factual aspects, but also in the light of spatial, time-related and some other value-related criteria. This mode of evaluating, proposing and decision-making has eventually led to the establishment of several new and important thematic domains in science, management and decision-making. These are primarily considerations about possible ecological, health-related, technological and other impacts, hence concerns for environmental protection, health risks, restrictions of civic freedoms and citizens´ human rights, or – more precisely – respect for what H. Reichenbach, one of the founders of analytical philosophy in Berlin (from where he had to flee and emigrate), called “the direction of time”. (To mark his birth anniversary his Berlin colleagues organized a gathering, while a book of articles and studies was published on the occasion of the event. This contained contributions not only by German scientists but also studies by authors from many other countries, including my own study on the subject of technological time, linking up to the works of H. Reichenbach.) Putting accent on the direction, nature of the rhythm of time, focus placed on the length of time requirements of some important intervals, on the boundaries of their reliable establishment proves to be a major component of both individual and strictly personal decision-making, as well as the decision-making on some social projects, for instance large-scale building projects, major investments etc.

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10.3  Analytical Philosophy and Language Communication The pioneers of analytical philosophy and hence also of the philosophy of science have greatly contributed to an analysis of communication processes and, therefore, have helped in shedding light on the nature and function of language and language communication, and also the creation of that thematic field referred to as the philosophy of language. That is why it was vital to distinguish the language, as a system of verbal signs and a set of rules of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic nature, and what used to be described as the “metalanguage”, i.e. designation and expression concerning the structure and function of language. This particular distinction was spelt out by A. Tarski, one of the founders of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The same author also came up with the significant specifications of such concepts as “truth”, “logical inference” and other important results. The significant role played by syntax was singled out by R. Carnap in his work on the logical syntax of language. Similarly important was the accentuation of the great importance of syntactic connectivity, i.e. mutual relations of words, their types and forms in word concatenation, an aspect highlighted by K. Ajdukiewicz, another figure of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Efforts to promote perspicuity, semantic precision as well as the quality and reliable interpretative prerequisites of language, used to express the outcome of learning, acquisition and confirmation of established conclusions, have always figured prominently among the good traditions and target orientations of all the currents and directions espousing the traditions of the Central European focal points and centers of stimulating initiatives of analytical philosophy and the philosophy of science. In addition to language and language performance, analytical philosophy and the philosophy of science have always cultivated very close and intertwined relations with logic, and primarily modern or mathematical logic. The very center of these efforts is constituted by relations and contexts associated with the procedures of logical inference, with the possibilities and forms of derivation, notably in the contexts of processing data of various provenances, with the generation of conclusions coupled with the evaluation of their acceptability and reliability. Analytical philosophy has turned the spotlight of attention on cognitive procedures associated with operations involving production of generalizations and their use in those areas operating both with generalizations, i.e. the so-called nomological sentences, and also with a set of singular empirical findings. These are primarily procedures of explanation, prediction, the structure of medical diagnosis, the process of proposing a therapy, analyses of problem situations and proposals, plus plans and projects for their solution. These subjects were introduced especially by the work of C. G. Hempel, to which the author of this study has also linked up. (As a matter of interest, C. G. Hempel also visited Prague, called me and we took a long walk through Prague, partly engaged in discussions of our common interests. In fact, during the totalitarian regime in this country, ostensibly tourist visits by foreigners proved to be a frequent form of direct and quite personal contacts, facilitating transfer of manuscripts and texts that could then be published in the free world. The greatest credit for the transfer – or rather “smuggling” – of my texts and their

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subsequent publication abroad is due to the Dutch editor D. Reidel and my German colleague Professor F. Rapp.) Seen in a broader perspective, those were primarily the far-reaching civilizational changes, the wide-ranging development and growing expansion of the information technologies that facilitated a huge broadening of the fields and available horizons of language communication and, thus, their functions and possibilities of mutual intellectual contacts and exchange of knowledge. In this respect, an important part was played by shorter or longer periods of political thaw and relaxation in my country, particularly in the 1960s. Already in 1964 I was invited by Professor Y. Bar-Hillel, a pupil and colleague of R. Carnap and co-author of a major study on semantic information, to attend a conference at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Meetings outside the conference made it possible for me to get acquainted with a number of interesting personalities and representatives of the centers of analytical philosophy, logic and the methodology of science, notably with A. Tarski. I was also approached by S. Körner, Professor at the Bristol University in Britain, an émigré from post-war Czechoslovakia who had taken part in the anti-fascist resistance movement during World War II. As a matter of interest, his wife was my classmate at an elementary school and during the first years at a grammar school in Znojmo. She had saved her life before the war by promptly emigrating from Czechoslovakia in 1938 at the instigation of my father. Of great importance for what became a thematic and methodological affinity, mutual relationship and stimuli have always been the links to the topics and problems concerning cognitive procedures, the field of data and knowledge processing and use, their verification, confirmation and application. This has been reflected quite distinctly in the inception of approaches, methods and results of all the thematic fields of information science, information technologies and modes of application of such technologies. This only confirms that the notions and principles of cybernetics, whose author is Norbert Wiener, were born at a seminar on the philosophy of science which saw the birth of the well-known and famous anticipation of cybernetics, namely the work called Behavior, Purpose and Teleology penned by three authors: W. Rosenblueth, N. Wiener, J. Bigelow, two of whom had proceeded from the knowledge of physiology and medicine, while N. Wiener was a mathematician. This fact alone just shows that analytical philosophy of science is capable of participating in the construction of bridges connecting disciplines that study different subjects. Indeed, analytical philosophy and its methodological constituents take part in using the devices of information technologies in processing acquired results, in generating important relations and dependences of empirical findings on the formation of generalizations and their verification and confirmation.

10.4  A Few Personal Remarks As things stood in the past, neither analytical philosophy, the methodology of science nor related modern logic enjoyed any favor with the leaders and adherents of the fundamentalist ideology and, hence, the monopoly ideology of the European

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totalitarian dictatorships. The latter are exemplified by the Nazi and racist ideology, practiced by the Third Reich in Germany, or the fascist ideologies in Italy and Spain, and the communist ideologies pursued in the countries of the Soviet bloc. It was immensely fortunate that large numbers of those creative personalities from the Central European intellectual centers and hubs, known as sources of such leading scientific initiatives, had managed to emigrate before the outbreak of World War II to the Anglo-Saxon world, where such scientists and university teachers were not only very well received but were also able to establish and stimulate large groups of gifted pupils and followers. The totalitarian regimes and their ideological arbiters were guilty of whipping up various witch-hunts and organizing acts of ideological reprobation of those who had failed to live up to their ideological principles and requirements. Ideological criticism and expulsion from a university or academy was also followed by the seizure of one’s passport and a ban on publishing. Fortunately, one could fall back on a relatively wide-ranging solidarity given by foreign colleagues who visited Prague as tourists and who were in a position to meet their “captive” colleagues. As mentioned above, this system ensured the transfer – or rather smuggling – of my works, which were then published by the Boston University, as well as other works on the philosophy of science and technology. As a member of editorial boards of some international serial publications I received foreign literature published in the given and related thematic fields. These acts of solidarity also serve as an excellent proof of the links existing between these particular scientific domains and their authors and pioneers on the one hand and the best human values on the other.

Part III

Reviews

Chapter 11

Christian Damböck, Deutscher Empirismus: Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830–1930. (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, Bd. 24.) Dordrecht: Springer 2017. xiii +237 pages Scott Edgar

Recently, a small but growing literature has started to fill the gap in our understanding of mid and late nineteenth-century German philosophy. But entrenched historiographical narratives suggest nothing much of interest happened in German-language philosophy after Hegel and before Nietzsche and Frege. So why should philosophers care about that period? Christian Damböck’s Deutscher Empirismus: Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830–1930 presents an argument for an unambiguous answer to that question, and one that matters for contemporary analytic philosophy. Naturalism in analytic philosophy, especially in philosophy of science, often seems in the grip of an over-emphasis on the methods and results of the natural sciences, as opposed to the humanities and social sciences. This can lead to the neglect of and difficulty making sense of those matters dealt with by the humanities and social sciences. For example, we have a rich and mature literature on natural kinds, but only a comparatively limited and as yet immature understanding of social kinds. Damböck’s account of a tradition he calls German empiricism serves to illustrate what philosophy might look like if it took seriously the idea that knowledge is always embedded within a cultural and historical context, and thus that the theory of knowledge must be informed by those disciplines concerned with culture and history, namely, the Geisteswissenschaften. Damböck’s account begins with the observation that between 1830 and 1880, most of the important scholarly advances in Germany were in the Geisteswissenschaften: for example, the rise of classical philology, political economy, and the beginnings of sociology (pp. 22–6). While natural scientific sensory physiology and experimental psychology also made important progress in that

S. Edgar (*) Saint Mary‘s University, Halifax, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_11

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period, even they were concerned with the human mind and cognitive processes. German empiricism was the philosophical response to those advances. As Damböck characterizes it, German empiricism seems to be the conjunction of four theses. First, philosophy must explain knowledge by appeal to some conceptual apparatus of abstract system akin to Kant’s categories (pp.  35, 67). Second, that conceptual apparatus or system must itself be explained by appeal to the domain of the spiritual -- that is, culture and history (pp. 35, 54, 66–7). Third, culture and history, and so the domain of the spiritual, are not accessible to a priori speculation. Instead, they can be investigated only by attending to actual, contingent facts available to systematic empirical investigation. That is why German empiricism is empiricism. A point that Damböck emphasizes follows from these first three theses: on German empiricism, for any object, there is no uniquely correct representation of the object independent of its cultural and historical context (pp.  35–6). The final thesis of German empiricism is that culture and history are explanatorily autonomous from the psychology of individual minds. Consequently, the Geisteswissenschaften cannot be reduced to a natural scientific psychology of individual minds. Thus for Damböck, German empiricism entails the rejection of a classical empiricism that seeks to explain all knowledge by appeal to sensations and laws governing them in individual minds (p. 70). Damböck traces the development and articulation of this view through four chapters about philosophy in Berlin in the decades following Hegel’s death, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hermann Cohen, and the young Rudolf Carnap. He makes a persuasive case that, for example, Heymann Steinthal and Dilthey are German empiricists in his sense. How well Cohen and Carnap fit the mould is likely to be more controversial. Damböck’s first chapter sets the scene in which German empiricism emerged and offers accounts of the views of August Boeckh, F.E.  Beneke, Adolf Trendelendburg, and Heymann Steinthal. While Beneke and Trendelenburg have received some recent attention, Damböck’s accounts of Boeckh and Steinthal move into territory that is so far mostly uncharted in the secondary literature. His aim is to trace the development of German empiricism in these figures’ work. The picture that emerges is not one of German empiricism springing fully formed in the 1830s immediately after Hegel’s death. Rather, on Damböck’s account, different elements of the doctrine emerged at different points in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Damböck’s interpretations of Boeckh, Beneke, and Trendelenburg suggest that these figures defend only key elements of German empiricism, rather than the whole doctrine. On Damböck’s account, both Boeckh and Beneke reject classical empiricism and its view that all knowledge can be explained by appeal directly to sensation. Rather, for them philosophy must explain knowledge by appeal to some conceptual apparatus akin to Kant’s categories. But then, that conceptual apparatus itself must be grounded empirically: for Boeckh, by inductively testing it against experience (p. 56); and for Beneke, by explaining it by appeal to the psychology of inner experience in the subject (p. 61). Trendelenburg takes the important step of allowing that history is a part of the empirical context that explains knowledge (p. 65).

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In Steinthal, we first see German empiricism in something like its full-fledged form. Here we first find the domain of the empirical extended to include culture and history. At the centre of Steinthal’s theory of knowledge is the idea of a “mechanics of consciousness.” It is the cognitive apparatus necessary to explain the possibility of knowledge. Crucially, the mechanics of consciousness is not a function exclusively of individual minds. It extends to the cultural, or in Steinthal’s terms, the spiritual. Damböck’s interpretation of Steinthal differs from Frederick Beiser’s recent interpretation in a way that is important for Damböck’s claim that Steinthal is a German empiricist. Beiser argues that Steinthal’s account of the spiritual domain is intelligible in mechanical terms.1 But Damböck argues (persuasively, in my view) that, for Steinthal, an account of the “mechanics of consciousness” of spirit cannot be reduced to mechanistic processes in the minds of individuals. In Steinthal, we thus have the view that knowledge must ultimately be explained by the empirical investigation of culture and history, and that the cultural domain cannot be reduced to psychological processes in individual minds (p. 70). Damböck’s Dilthey chapter makes the case that although Dilthey’s views changed and evolved in many ways over the course of his career, there is a constant thread that unifies his early and late work. That thread, Damböck argues, is German empiricism. For Dilthey, as for Kant, human knowledge has a conceptual basis that makes experience possible. But for Dilthey, that basis can be understood only by attending to the spiritual, that is, to human history and culture. Thus Dilthey conceived of his project as a Critique of Historical Reason and the Geisteswissenschaften play an essential role in that project (pp. 77–8). Damböck traces the different elements of this view through Dilthey’s writings. For example, in his early Introduction to the Human Sciences, Dilthey objects to the likes of Comte and Mill that they are insufficiently empiricist, since in failing to recognize the historical dimension of Geist they hypostatize allegedly universal laws of human knowledge (pp. 76–7). A similar idea plays a role in Dilthey’s distinction between explanatory and descriptive psychology: explanatory psychology has its roots in Mill’s associationistic psychology, and seeks to explain mental phenomena by reference to fixed or unchanging representations of sensory images (p. 86). But Dilthey denies that there can be any such unchanging representations independently of history. In his late Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, Dilthey articulates a conception of “objective spirit” that rejects Hegel’s absolute idealism in favour of a view that sees spirit objectified in concrete historical events and artifacts that can be studied empirically (p. 91). Further, Damböck argues that Dilthey’s German empiricism manifests itself in his complex account of the relation between, on the one hand, the Geisteswissenschaften and their objects, and on the other hand, the natural sciences and their objects. Dilthey rejects Wilhelm Windelband’s hard distinction between how the natural and human sciences form their concepts. As Damböck puts it, for

 Frederick Beiser, The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism: 1796–1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, p.468.

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Dilthey the distinction between the two kinds of science is “gradual”: the natural sciences prepare the ground for the Geiseswissenschaften (p. 94). He insists that the concepts developed by hermeneutics and descriptive psychology have an explanatory autonomy that cannot be reduced to the concepts of, for example, individual, natural scientific psychology. Damböck’s chapter on Cohen is full of original interpretive claims that challenge a number of orthodox points in the Cohen literature -- too many for me to enumerate here. But what is most valuable about the chapter is how squarely it confronts one of the central puzzles of Cohen’s theoretical philosophy: the tension between his commitment to a transcendental method that discovers a priori principles that, Cohen suggests, have a universal validity and his view that philosophy must attend to knowledge as it changes and evolves through history. Damböck’s thesis that Cohen is a German empiricist requires him to weigh the second of these commitments more heavily than the first. Central to Damböck’s interpretation is his account of Cohen’s transcendental method. For Cohen, the transcendental method discovers a priori principles contained within experience that systematically connect together different elements of that experience. Those elements are always incomplete and change over the course of the history of science (p. 142). But the elements of experience are unified by the principles that philosophy discovers using the transcendental method, because for Cohen those principles are expressions of the law of continuity, which brings constancy to disparate elements of experience (p. 144). The law of continuity does that because, for Cohen, it is itself an expression of reason (pp. 144–5). But crucially, Damböck argues that Cohen’s conceptions of continuity and reason are impossible to separate from their cultural and historical contexts. For, on Damböck’s account, reason is not some formalism abstracted from culture. Rather, it provides an intersubjective foundation for knowledge by making systematic connections between elements of experience intelligible to us -- that is, to our culture (p. 156). Thus on Damböck’s interpretation, the a priori principles that Cohen’s transcendental method seeks to discover ultimately derive their status as rational and intersubjective, and so too objective, from culture. This interpretation of Cohen has the virtue of providing a clear explanation of why, for Cohen, a philosophical account of scientific knowledge must be embedded in a broader philosophical account of ethics, politics, and religion, which for Cohen are central constituents of culture. At the same time, this interpretation of Cohen seems not to do justice to some of the central commitments of his theory of knowledge. For Cohen, reason and the law of continuity are universally valid. The unity that they ground in experience is universally valid. Damböck attempts to accommodate this commitment of Cohen’s by attributing to him the view that a singular, constant conception of reason will emerge from any sufficiently developed culture (p.  144). But this seems an implausible commitment: for if continuity and reason have their ground in culture, why wouldn’t they be as variable and subject to evolution as the cultures that ground them? We could solve this interpretive problem by saying: for Cohen, human expressions of reason and continuity evolve through history, and that philosophers’ only

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access to reason and continuity comes from attending to that historical progress; further, Cohen also thinks that reason and continuity are not grounded by and do not derive their validity from their changing expressions at different points in history, since their validity is ultimately universal. However, if we interpret Cohen this way, he no longer appears to be a German empiricist in Damböck’s sense, since on this view, the validity of reason and continuity is ultimately grounded independently of their historical contexts. In short, the genuine universal validity that Cohen assigns to reason and continuity seems not to fit the mould of German empiricism. Damböck’s final chapter is a detailed examination of Carnap’s view of the relation between politics and theoretical philosophy in the 1910s and 1920s, and especially in his Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Building on what is now a very mature Carnap literature, Damböck has uncovered a wealth of fascinating detail about Carnap’s earliest work. He argues, for example, that underpinning Carnap’s interactions with the Bauhaus design school was a shared emotional commitment to “community well-being” (p. 200), and that we can recognize the aesthetic commitments of the Aufbau only when we realize that Carnap’s aesthetics were not literary but architectural (pp. 205–6). However, Damböck’s principal aim in the chapter is to argue that Carnap’s early work bears traces of the German empiricist tradition, even if Carnap comes sometime after the main period of the tradition. He argues that throughout Carnap’s early life and while he was writing the Aufbau, he was preoccupied by political and cultural concerns. Of course, Carnap famously announced his political and social concerns in the polemical preface to the Aufbau. But Damböck is at pains to spell out the details of exactly how those political and social concerns shaped Carnap’s theoretical philosophy in the Aufbau in significant ways. Most importantly, Damböck argues, Carnap wanted the conception of objectivity and intersubjectivity he articulates in the Aufbau to establish a universally communicable basis for making claims about value. On Damböck’s account, Carnap thought that shared basis would eventually encourage socialist politics, by “reforming” the “irrational side of our lives” (p. 199). Damböck’s account of the young Carnap’s thinking is valuable for the richness of its historical detail. But it is unclear how well Carnap fits into the tradition of German empiricism in Damböck’s sense. One concern is that the Aufbau’s conception of value and culture is explicitly reductionist: for Carnap, the heteropsychological domain is reducible to the physical, which is in turn reducible to the autopsychological. That view stands in stark contrast to Steinthal’s and Dilthey’s view that the spiritual domain is not reducible to psychological processes in individual minds. But perhaps more fundamentally, the relation Carnap sees between theoretical philosophy and culture seems very different than the relations Steinthal and Dilthey see, and that Damböck characterizes as the core of German empiricism. For Steinthal and Dilthey (and for Cohen on Damböck’s interpretation of him) there are necessary conditions of the possibility of knowledge and experience, and those necessary conditions are explained for the theory of knowledge only by reference to history or culture. But as Damböck shows, Carnap in the Aufbau does not argue that ­philosophy

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needs to appeal to history, culture, or politics for the purpose of providing an epistemological explanation of knowledge. Rather he conceives of his epistemology as in the service of specific, partisan political aims. For Carnap, politics and culture provide the motivation for doing theoretical philosophy. But for the German empiricists, at least in the cases of Steinthal and Dilthey, theoretical philosophy appeals to culture to explain knowledge. Leaving aside concerns about how well Cohen and Carnap fit into the tradition of German empiricism, Damböck’s chapters on both contain a wealth of deeply-­ researched detail that will be of interest to specialists. Moreover, those concerns do not weaken Damböck’s principal contention that German empiricism is a tradition worth taking seriously. Indeed, it seems to me to be a useful frame for understanding not just Steinthal’s and Dilthey’s philosophies, but also the philosophy of, for example, Wilhelm Wundt, another figure concerned with the role of history and culture in explaining knowledge who deserves more attention than he has received from historians of philosophy. The usefulness of the idea of German empiricism ensures that Damböck’s book will be of interest, not just to specialists, but to any philosophers who want to take the Geisteswissenschaften seriously, or who want to develop a naturalism inclusive enough to countenance the methods of history and the social sciences in the theory of knowledge.

Chapter 12

Stepan Ivanyk, Filozofowie ukraińscy w Szkole Lwowsko-Warszawskiej. Warszawa: Semper 2014. 223 pages Jan Jakub Surman

Habsburg Galicia as a melting pot and meeting place of different languages is a privileged place to look for transcultural contacts in scholarship. Stepan Ivanyk, Warsaw-based Lviv philosopher and historian of philosophy, takes exactly this region to look at Ukrainian scholars in the Lviv-Warsaw School of analytic and mathematical philosophy, a school considered in the literature as a Polish phenomenon disregarding participation of scholars identifying with Jewish and Ukrainian cultures. In fact, with few notable exceptions1 the topic of intercultural contacts in culturally mixed regions of (not only Habsburg) Central Europe has been only scarcely a topic of historical inquiry. Already the introductory chapter makes clear the necessity for looking more closely at the goings-on in the Eastern Habsburg province and at the intercultural communication. During the late nineteenth century Lviv became a center for scholars identifying with both Polish and Ukrainian2 cultures, with flourishing urban scene of local scholarly organizations, including two towering institutions: Franz I. University (Polish-language, with some lectures in Ukrainian; lecturers were with few exceptions of Polish identification) and Shevchenko Scientific Society (Ukrainian). Both were of utmost importance and attracted Polish resp. Ukrainian scholars from abroad: Polish language universities existed only in Galicia, and Ukrainian scholarly organizations were similarly limited to this region until 1905 due to political oppression of 1  Jerzy Maternicki, Leonid Zaszkilniak, Wielokulturowe środowisko historyczne Lwowa w XIX i XX wieku. Vols. 1–5. Rzeszów – L’viv: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego 2004–2007. 2  In the nineteenth century the denotation Ukrainian was used mostly for Ukrainian-speakers from the Russian Empire, while in Galicia the denotation was Ruthenian language and Ruthenians. This differentiation only shortly outlived the World War I, when the common name for both groups became Ukrainian. For the sake of clarity, I use only the name Ukrainian in this review.

J. J. Surman (*) National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_12

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Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire. With a large proportion of Jews, Galicia was a privileged place of intercultural but also transcultural phenomena and transfers, as Ivanyk underscores (p. 17). And although political atmosphere grew denser after 1918 and the then Polish city Lwów, with Polish Jan Casimir University, was more hostile to Ukrainians and their organizations, contacts remained. Merely by urban density and pivotal role of the Lviv University, scholars of different cultural identifications had intensive contacts and even if they sometimes dissented on political issues, they often had overwhelming intellectual affinities. It is this intercultural, often transcultural environments, where one of  Franz Brentano’s students, Kazimierz Twardowski got a chair of philosophy in 1895.3 Twardowski’s academic work and the activities of his Ukrainian students are the main topics of the book. Following the introduction on intercultural Galicia, Ivanyk begins by analyzing Twardowski’s relations with Ukrainians (pp.  19–20). In the literature up to now, these relations are often described as mostly conflictual and characterized by (alleged) Twardowski’s anti-ukrainism, and descriptions concentrate on Twardowski’s conflict with Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky in 1901. Ivanyk however, relativizes it showing that Twardowski’s contacts with Ukrainian students, his attitude to creation of Ukrainian university or his relations with other Ukrainian professors, were positive (p.  26). Twardowski had not only connections with his students but also ties to two Ukrainian families: to name the more important connection, his sister Zofia was married to Yuzef (Józef) Kryp’jakevych, uncle of famous Ukrainian historian Ivan Kryp’jakevych; Twardowski knew and frequently visited Kryp’jakevych family and supported also Ivan’s brother Leon, who (unsuccessfully) wanted to acquire a teacher’s position in the 1920s (pp. 27–8). When Ivanyk speaks about Twardowski’s Ukrainian followers, he refers to his direct students and scholars active in Polish Philosophical Association (Polskie Towarzystwo Filozoficzne, led by Twardowski) or writing in its journal Ruch Filozoficzny (Philosophical Movement) (p. 30). While it is certainly a broad categorization, it allows Ivanyk to include in his study a broad range of scholars and then discuss more closely their connection to Twardowski. Characteristically, Twardowski himself also pursued a very broad program and his students belonged to several disciplines, with few shared characteristics like general adherence to scientific philosophy, use of analytical method, psychologism and devotion to language precision (pp.  151–162, esp. pp.  151–3 with reference to Izydora Dąmbska). The Lviv-­ Warsaw School united many of them, but largely not all can be subscribed under this name (neither can be in fact all Ukrainian students Ivanyk discusses). Thus among Twardowski’s Ukrainian students analyzed in the study, Ivanyk lists not only the most known: philosophers Stepan Baley, Stepan Oleksiuk and Volodymyr Yurynec’ (after 1918  in the Soviet Union, where he was one of leading Marxist philosophers, executed 1937 for “nationalists deviations”(p. 42)), but includes also 3  Interestingly, as Ivanyk notes, another candidate for the chair was Berlin-based Ukrainian philosopher Ivan Kopach (1870–1952). Unfortunately the author did not note the source of this information nor discussed it further (p. 30, fn. 84).

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pedagogue and philosopher Yakym Yarema (after 1918 in Prague and after 1930 in Ternopil’, then Poland), Greek-Catholic priest and philosopher Havryïl Kostel’nyk or pedagogue Milena Rudnyc’ka. Another student Ilarion Svyencic’kyi, received Twardowski’s support for his research on history of philosophy in Rus’ (p.  45). Apart from ten direct students, five further scholars who were either Twardowski’s grandsons or adopted his approach are mentioned in the annex, among them famous writer Ivan Franko (pp. 183–4) or Ivan Mirchuk, professor of philosophy in Prague, Munich, and Berlin (p. 184–6). In fact, the names of philosophers discussed in the book have largely been forgotten in the Ukrainian historiography of philosophy – and Ivanyk, who publishes also in Ukrainian  – is on his best way to play a role comparable to role of Friedrich Stadler for the Austrian history of philosophy and Jan Woleński for the Polish one. It would be too exhaustive here to analyze philosophical ideas of Twardowski’s students Ivanyk discusses. But some characteristics of their work are worth mentioning. Well in accordance to the basic elements that united Twardowski’s students, also his Ukrainian students claimed the necessity of precision (Baley: “clear assumptions in thinking …precision and exactitude is required from for psychologists during their research”, Yarema: “[we need] precise and sharp concepts”), importance of psychology (even as basis of logic in cases of Baley and Kostel’nyk) and of introspection (Baley, Yarema, Oleksiuk), intentionalism (Baley, Oleksiuk) etc. (pp.  163–9). Ivanyk lists also some lesser commonalities in areas of ethics, esthetics, history of philosophy and logic, although they were rather of marginal interest to the scholars in question. Finally Ivanyk discusses the influence of Twardowski’s students on philosophy. He emphasizes especially Baley: his work “Über Urteilsgefühle”4 was discussed by Meinong (p. 173), his psychoanalytical analysis of literature of eminent Ukrainian romantic poet Taras Shevchenko5 and his Polish counterpart Juliusz Słowacki6 inspired similar analysis among other Ukrainian authors and probably also Polish ones (pp. 174–5). Oleksiuk’s psychologistic analysis of orthographic mistakes was most likely inspiration of similar Polish works. But indeed, influence discussed by Ivanyk is quite limited, also because as he states most Ukrainian Twardowski students published in Ukrainian (80% of works), and Ukrainian philosophy of the interwar was inclined to Marxism-Leninism (p. 176). Moreover, a number of books and articles of Twardowski’s students remained in manuscripts and many of articles were published in peripheral journals, since Ukrainian scholars had scarce possibility to work after 1918 in academic science in Poland and in the Soviet Union. Baley, who after a brief academic career in the short-living and illegal Ukrainian university and working primarily as a teacher, with Twardowski’s support got associate profes4  Stepan Baley, “Über Urteilsgefühle”, in: Buchdruckerei der Schewtschenko-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Lemberg, 1916. 5  Stepan Baley, “Z psyhologiï tvorčosty Ševčenka“, in: Šljahy, 1916, L’viv. 6  Stepan Baley, “Psychologiczne uwagi o genezie poematu Słowackiego w Szwajcarii”, in: PF R. XXIV, 1921, 1–2, pp. 115–135; Stepan Baley, “Psychoanaliza jednej pomyłki Słowackiego”, in: Pamiętnik Literacki, XXI, 1924/25, pp. 136–154.

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sorship at the Warsaw University 1928, was an exception from the rule, but most scholars Ivanyk analyses either worked in the immigration or, in most cases, as teachers, what gave only few publication possibilities. (Yurynec’ became famous and influential, but only after turning Marxist-Leninist). Even pioneering books have minor shortcomings. First of all, the book discusses students of Twardowski and does not give an answer to the question if there were Ukrainian non-Twardowski-students in the Lviv-Warsaw School, e.g. followers of Jan Łukasiewicz and Stanisław Leśniewski, i.e. of the Warsaw branch of the school, concerned more with (mathematical) logic. Secondly, Ivanyk writes mostly from the position of a philosopher and the main parts of the book are concerned with philosophical outlooks of his protagonists. One is also very eager to know more on the relations and contacts to other scholars in the interwar period, and also on the non-philosophical occupations and influence of his protagonists, something that seems quite interesting if one considers their role as interlocutors between Galician nationalities and general tendency of Lviv-Warsaw School scholars to stress ethical aspects of their work (e.g. in the concept of praxeology). Ivanyk notes these phenomena, but discusses them very scarcely. This makes the book of course more valuable for philosophers, but historians interested in cultural dynamics and mechanisms of transcultural transmissions and translations, or on politics-philosophy nexus, will be left with some questions unanswered. But one cannot expect a book to answer all the questions, especially since the availability of sources is not ideal. To sum up, the book under review is a very successful step in uncovering the Ukrainian heritage of the Brentano tradition and one can only wish that this work is further supported. It is also a welcomed addition to the debate of Polish-Ukrainian scholarly relations, largely discussed emphasizing conflicts and cleavages and downsizing contacts and cooperation. An English or German version of the book would be a very logical second step, being a great addition to the thriving multicultural research on both Habsburg Galicia and on post-Habsburg Central European philosophy.

Chapter 13

Monika Gruber, Alfred Tarski and the “Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages”: A Running Commentary with Consideration of the Polish Original and the German Translation. (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, Vol. 39.) Cham: Springer 2016. xii + 187 pages Adam Tamas Tuboly

Modern formal logic is a curious beast: while it does not abound in comprehensive and detailed historical works, it went through so many changes (both regarding terminology and content) that it deserves even philologically deep inquiries. Choosing the topic and issue of discussion is, however, a delicate matter. One either decides for a classic text that influenced generations of scholars, was translated into various languages and set the stage for further research; or one deals with such smaller fishes that filled the ocean and provided such ideas and material that could have been taken up by big fishes. While usually the policy making big ones cannot exist without the smaller ones, in the history of philosophy and especially in the history of logic it is a quite convenient strategy to start with the big fishes. Monika Gruber’s monograph is also a curious beast. Gruber’s hero is perhaps the most famous modern logician, Alfred Tarski and his well-known and much discussed “The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages.” The author rightly notes that “[the article] laid foundations for all future theories of truth. Even today, over eighty years later, Tarski’s equivalence scheme is the core of every truth theory” (p. 117). Though the choice is classic, it is well justified and the text provides some important clues about where to move forward in our research. The present monograph is a refined and revised version of Gruber’s doctoral dissertation. Nonetheless, Alfred Tarski and the “Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages”: A Running Commentary with Consideration of the Polish Original and the German Translation is not a customary book. It is more like a document that A. T. Tuboly (*) Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hosszuheteny, Hungary e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_13

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should be carried over in our pocket (despite Springer’s huge format) to open up whenever a logical/historical problem occurs during a pleasant discussion. Tarski’s groundbreaking work was first published in Polish in 1933. A German translation was followed after some initial difficulties in 1935. While it is known that the German version brought some international reputation to Tarski (even Rudolf Carnap mentioned it in his works after the 1940s that the development of semantics was hindered by the fact that its most important works were composed only in Polish), it is less known the German translation did not always follow accurately the Polish original. It was just the icing on the cake that the English translation of Tarski’s work by Joseph Woodger in 1956 was based on the German version and not on the original one. That meant two things: all the supposed mistakes of the German were carried over to the English one and all the usual difficulties of translations between German and English surfaced in Woodger’s work. Gruber reviews all these mistakes, ambiguities, mistakable phrases, imprecise formulations, and provides a detailed commentary on all of them. The book is structured as follows. Chapter 1 is a short introduction about the various editions and texts that were used for the study; it also has a list-like summary of the main terminological and translational issues. Chapter 2 is the main body of the book. It is indeed a running commentary of Tarski’s text. Unfortunately due to copyright issues the entire English translation is not reproduced; nevertheless the most important sentences and passages are quoted in full length. Gruber always starts by summarizing the content of every page/passage of Tarski’s texts. These are followed by a short commentary on and philosophical inquiry about Tarski’s thought. Finally, some “Translational Remarks” are added to every passage; after providing the original Polish phrase or sentence, Gruber adds the German and the English versions – typing in bold the discussed words to highlight them – and shows whether they are adequate translations or not. In many cases, it turns out that a given mistake in the English translation is due to the misguided German translation. This is the case, e.g., with “sentence”, “statement”, “theorem” which are often rendered the same in the German and English translations, causing certain confusions. It would be a purposeless and unaccomplishable task to review here all the translational and philosophical items from Gruber’s menu. Not just because there are indeed many of them but also due to the fact that each of her readers will presumably find other items interesting, important and thought provoking. I will mention here only three things. There are such issues like a certain Polish word was rendered in German as “oft” and in English as “often” while the original word meant “sometimes.” Similar confusions are to be found regarding the Polish expression “poprawna I trafna definicja” that was translated into German as “eine korrekt und richtige Definition”; however the phrase ended up in the English version simply as “correct definition” instead of the right “a correct and adequate definition.” There are many other such nuances, but one might never know until you get through the whole text that which nuance will turn out to be of utmost importance regarding a delicate point. A rather bothersome situation is induced by the word “intuitive” and its relatives. In the original Polish version, Tarski used that and related concepts repeatedly, as he

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wrote in a letter to Twardowski (reproduced in the volume, p.  168), he even “overuse[d]” them. However, if one opens up either the German or English translations, “sometimes the word ‘intuition’ is omitted and sometimes it is included” (p.  4), but there is no consistency in the translations and they do not deliver the impression of the original to the reader. But, as Gruber points out in the book from time to time, this bears on our understanding of Tarski’s development in general and of his article in particular. As Tarski was influenced in the 1920s and 30s by Stanisław Leśniewski whose approach was called “intuitionistic formalism” (p. 3), it might point towards a deeper look on the relation between Tarski’s logical philosophy and the cognitive role of intuitions that was often regarded as an important source by Polish mathematicians and logicians. Gruber also notes from Tarski’s letter his reasons to change the terminology between the German and Polish version. Tarski wrote (p. 168) that “meanwhile the logicians here [in Vienna] claim that these terms – in the contexts in which they occur in my paper, – are almost incomprehensible for a German reader.” Thus, having various discussions presumably with Carnap and others, Tarski surrendered to the German climate and did not let to translate the “intuitive” phrases literally. While it is often thought that Polish logicians influenced Viennese scholars (e.g. Carnap in semantics), there seems to be perhaps another direction of influence. As Tarski’s article often contains “intuitive” and similar words, Gruber regularly comments on this issue and calls our attention to the misguided translations. Nonetheless, a more detailed inquiry is needed from a historical, philosophical and logical point of view as well. This is not a real complaint though – the nature of Gruber’s investigation forced her to skip such relevant and important issues, but at least we are now in a position to know where to look for further topics and lines of research. The volume ends with the relevant correspondence of Tarski and Twardowski in Chapter 4. The photos of 42 letters are reproduced as authentic sources for historians and logicians, but Gruber also translated all of them into English, making this rich and significant material available to a broader audience as well. Though the correspondence does not contain many surprises since Gruber cited the most important dates and information in her comments during the main text, it is still useful to have all the letters “in hand” together. As many philosophical and logical ideas are forged at first in correspondence and in personal letters, it is hopeful that more English translations will follow from the Lvov-Warsaw School in order to appreciate better and understand more deeply the history of analytic philosophy in general and of logic in particular. The volume is structured well, contains only an insignificant amount of typos and errors, though it should be mentioned that after a longer German quotation “Mach 1929” was a somewhat strange reference; as it turned out Gruber quoted the famous manifesto of the Vienna Circle (written by Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath and Hans Hahn) that was published by the Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Association) in 1929. This was a bit misleading as the manifesto is usually cited under the name of its authors after its English translation from 1973 (and it was recently re-­published and edited by Friedrich Stadler and Thomas Uebel). But this is again just a minor

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thing to complain about. Gruber indeed made a great job in delivering us the main course from the history of modern logic. Philosophers, historians and logicians shall find something here for their own interests, and should open it regularly to get a better understanding of where we come from and – in this context especially – how we arrived to our present appreciation of language, logic and philosophy.

 bituary: In Memory of Robert S. Cohen O (1923–2017) Friedrich Stadler

We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Robert S. Cohen who passed away in his house in Watertown, Boston on June 19, 2017, at the age of 94. From the beginning of the Institute Vienna Circle Bob was a strong supporter of our aims and activities as well as a close friend of mine and other members. He certainly provided valuable and lasting inspiration for our conferences and publications. Bob leaves an indelible mark as a pioneer of the history and philosophy of science, working together with his friends Marx Wartofsky, Adolf Grünbaum and Gerald Holton. He was greatly inspired by his personal acquaintance with exiled members of the Vienna Circle like Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank and their heritage in the Anglo-Saxon world, most notably Otto Neurath and Edgar Zilsel..The renowned “Boston Center for the Philosophy and History of Science“ which he founded as a Colloquium in 1960, and his path- breaking book series “Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science“ that has appeared since 1963, the legendary series „”Vienna Circle Collection“, which he edited from 1973 together with Henk Mulder and Brian McGuinness, are some of the milestones of his outstanding lifework. In addition, he contributed to science education and built bridges between Western philosophy of science and traditions all over the world, already in the Cold War period. He also donated his scientific library to the Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2007. Our last joint project was on the life and work of the Chinese philosopher and Vienna Circle member Tscha Hung (= Hong Qian). Unfortunately, we were unable to complete the book but will finish it in honour of Bob’s achievements. Till the end of his life Bob remained a committed leftist intellectual who stood up for a democratic civil society in the European Enlightenment tradition. His personal charm, his wit and sophisticated humour were unique. He was a most important representative of the legendary founding generation of philosophy of science and advocated a vision of philosophy of science that includes its historical, social

F. Stadler Vienna Circle Society and Institute Vienna Circle, Vienna, Austria © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3

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and political dimensions. Bob played a decisive role in passing on this vision to the philosophy of science throughout the second half of the 20th century and beyond. We are proud and grateful that Bob donated the most valuable “Robert S. Cohen Collection and Archives“ to the Institute Vienna Circle. In 2003 he inaugurated this collection in Vienna.1 We will miss Bob immensely. Our deep feelings are with his wife Karin and his children Michael, Danny and Debbie and their families.

 http://www.univie.ac.at/ivc/biblio/rsca.htm#collection

1

Index

A Ajdukiewicz, K., 180 Andrews, D., 147 Aristotle, 11, 137, 138 Aron, R., 174 Assmann, A., 67 Austin, J.L., 161 Ayer, A.J., 134, 174, 176

Born, M., 52, 75, 83, 87 Brandom, R., 98 Brentano, F., 17, 25, 27, 56, 61, 70, 192, 194 Bridgman, P., 65 Broad, C.D., 161 Brod, M., 171 de Broglie, L., 91

B Bachelard, G., 22 Badiou, A., 148, 149 Bakoš, M., 153, 154, 160 Baley, S., 192, 193 Bar-Hillel, Y., 176, 181 Behne, A., 129 Beiser, F., 187 Beneke, F.E., 186 Bergmann, H., 15 Bergson, H., 47 Berka, K., 174 Berkeley, G., 6, 7, 114, 138 Bernstein, J., 166, 171, 172 von Bertalanffy, L., 176 Bigelow, J., 181 Black, J., 22, 100 Blau, E., 116 Blüh, O., 66 Boeckh, A., 186 Bohr, N., 75, 92, 93 du Bois-Reymond, E., 80, 87, 89 Boltzmann, L., 52, 75, 78, 85, 86, 88, 95 Bolzano, B., 3–16, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 71 Bonnet, 7

C Čáda, F., 41 Čapek, K., 27, 29 Carnap, R., 3, 4, 7–9, 11, 13, 15, 32, 49, 53, 55, 61, 62, 64, 71, 73, 97–109, 111, 114, 124–128, 132–134, 141, 142, 144, 145, 148, 152, 173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 181, 186, 189, 190, 196, 197 Černík, V., 162 Chisholm, R., 161 Cmorej, P., 154, 161, 162 Coffa, J.A., 97, 106–108 Cohen, H., 186, 188, 189 Cohen, R.S., 113, 114, 199–200 Comte, A., 25–29, 31, 34, 35, 37–43, 45, 48, 187 Condillac, E.B., 7 Le Corbusier, 112, 117–119, 131 D Damböck, Ch., 185–190 Danek, J., 15 Dante, A., 32 Descartes, R., 6, 27, 28, 158

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Schuster (ed.), The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 23, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3

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Index

202 Dilthey, W., 186, 187, 189, 190 Dratvová, A., 50, 62–64, 70, 71, 173 Driesch, H., 61, 62, 69, 155–157, 159 Drtina, F., 41, 49 Duhem, P., 52, 72, 81, 88 Dühring, E., 32 Dummett, M., 109 Durdík, J., 34, 35, 37, 39, 43 E von Ehrenfels, Ch., 32, 55–59, 61, 62, 70, 71 Einstein, A., 9, 32, 47, 58, 59, 61, 75, 77, 91, 95, 171, 176 Engels, B., 30, 31 Exner, F., 8, 52, 78, 86 F Fajfr, F., 33, 37, 39 Fanta, B., 171 Faraday, M., 22 Feigl, H., 114, 174, 199 Feuerbach, L., 31 Fichte, J.G., 31 Filkorn, V., 162 Finlay-Freundlich, E., 66 Fischer, J.L., 41, 49 Frank, H., 165–172 Frank, J., 112, 116–119, 121, 122 Frank, Ph., 51–81, 90, 93, 114, 152, 166, 170, 171, 199 Franko, I., 193 Fraydas, I., 167 Fraydas, M., 167 Fraydas, S., 172 Frege, G., 9, 14, 81, 138, 140, 185 Freud, S., 32, 170 Freund, B., 166, 171 Freund, I., 166, 171 Friese, H., 67 Fürth, R., 62, 65, 77, 78, 84 G Galison, P., 115, 116, 132 Gerson, I.A., 167 Giedion, S., 129 Glaser, W., 65 Gödel, K., 9, 32, 98, 104–107, 109 Gropius, W., 113 Gruber, M., 195–198 Guest, D., 145, 146

H Hahn, H., 3, 52, 73, 125, 197 Hegel, G.W.F., 31, 130, 136, 138, 143, 145, 147, 171, 185–187 Heine, H., 170 Heisenberg, W., 75, 83, 87, 90–92, 95 Hempel, C.G., 174, 180 Herbart, J.F., 7, 43 Herder, J.G., 31, 69, 144 Herzl, T., 170 Hilbert, D., 74, 75, 80, 81, 142 Hillebrandt, F., 56 Hoffmann, I., 4, 166 Hofmann, A., 129 Holton, G., 63, 65, 199 Hoppe, V., 111 Howard, D., 72 Hrushevsky, M., 192 Hrušovský, I., 111, 151–162 Hume, D., 7, 27, 31, 40 Hus, J., 175 von Hussarek, M.R., 56 Husserl, E., 13, 15, 25, 27, 28, 32, 47, 49 Huygens, Ch., 22, 23 I Ivanyk, S., 191–194 J James, W., 81, 91 Janich, P., 7 K Kafka, F., 166, 170–172 Kambartel, F., 7 Kant, I., 3, 7, 27, 31, 40, 47, 61, 79, 80, 84, 97, 138, 143, 144, 171, 186, 187 Katětov, M., 173 Kaufmann, F., 154, 158, 161 Kennedy, J.F., 174 Kisch, E.E., 170 Kleinpeter, H., 57, 58 Köhler, W., 62, 74, 156, 157 Kolman, A., 135–150 Körner, S., 181 Kosík, K., 175 Kostel’nyk, H., 193 Kotarbiński, T., 173 Kožešník, J., 175 Král, J., 36, 37, 39, 41 Kraus, K., 170

Index Kraus, O., 56, 61, 70 Krejčí, F., 33, 36, 41–46, 48, 49, 111 Kryp’jakevych, I., 192 Kryp’jakevych, Y., 192 Kuhn, T., 52 Kunte, L., 68 L Lampa, A., 56–58, 61, 70 Lenard, Ph., 95 Lenin, V.I., 139, 143, 144, 146, 147, 173 Leśniewski, S., 194, 197 Lessing, G.E., 31 Lewes, G.H., 36 Lichtenberg, G.Ch., 19 Loos, A., 112, 121–123 Lorenzen, P., 7 Łukasiewicz, J., 194 M Mach, E., v, vi, 3, 16–27, 32, 51–56, 58, 59, 70–73, 76, 78–81, 86, 88–91, 114, 125, 141, 143, 171, 197 Manusevitch, B., 172 Marty, A., 32, 56 Marx, K., 29–32, 126, 128, 129, 136, 147, 148, 199 Masaryk, T.G., 3, 25–32, 36–43, 49, 129, 174, 175 Mattessich, R., 177 Meinong, A., 15, 193 Mendel, G., 32 Menger, K., 4 Meyer, H.L., 66, 113–115, 121, 123 Michelangelo, B., 32 Mikš, J., 36 Mill, J.S., 25, 34–36, 187 Mirchuk, I., 193 von Mises, R., 74, 76–79, 84–90, 92, 95 Moore, G.E., 145 Mukařovský, J., 153 N Nagel, E., 63 Napoleon, 31, 117 Nemeth, E., 54, 55, 121 Neuber, M., 54 Neurath, O., 3, 16, 30, 32, 51–54, 64, 72, 73, 111–134, 144, 154, 158, 160, 161, 197, 199 Newton, I., 9, 23, 32, 62, 177

203 Nietzsche, F., 185 Nirenberg, D., 149 Nirenberg, R.L., 149 O Oleksiuk, S., 192, 193 P Pap, A., 174 Pascal, B., 8 Patočka, J., 25, 111, 175 Paulíny, E., 153 Pawel, E., 166, 170 Petzoldt, J., 56–59 Pick, G., 66 Planck, M., 47, 75, 78, 82, 89, 91 Poe, E.A., 15 Poincaré, H., 4, 52, 81, 88 Pollak, L.W., 65 Popelová, J., 33, 36, 45, 49 Považan, M., 153 Prawitz, D., 109 Purkyně, J.E., 32, 34, 37 Q Quine, W.V.O., 65 R Rádl, E., 32, 36, 62, 63, 69–71, 155, 156 Rapp, F., 181 Rausch von Traubenberg, H., 77 Ray, A., 54 Reichenbach, H., 73, 75, 86, 174, 179 Reidel, D., 113, 114, 125, 126, 181 Reidemeister, K., 95 Rey, A., 48, 54 Riška, A., 162 Rosenblueth, W., 181 Le Roy, É., 48 Rudnyc’ka, M., 193 Russell, B., 9, 14, 81, 126, 135, 138, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 174, 176 S Schlick, M., 30, 71, 75, 76, 79, 81, 93, 124, 126, 157 Schopenhauer, A., 31 Schröder, E., 81 Schrödinger, E., 75, 83, 87, 91

Index

204 Schultz, J., 7 Schulze Wessel, M., 66, 68 Schweidler, E., 78 Searle, J.R., 98 Šebestík, J., 3–32, 162 Sellars, W., 98 Šeracký, F., 46 Shapely, H., 65 Sitte, K., 66 Słowacki, J., 193 von Smoluchowski, M., 77 Sommerfeld, A., 74, 75, 77–79, 90–95 Spencer, H., 34–36, 41–43, 45 Stadler, F., 54, 62, 73, 76, 80, 115, 125, 126, 193, 197 Stark, J., 61, 94, 189 Starý, O., 175 Steinthal, H., 186, 187, 189, 190 Švácha, R., 116, 119, 124, 128, 131 Svyencic’kyi, I., 193 T Tardy, V., 42, 49, 50 Tarski, A., 97, 99, 104, 105, 107, 109, 174, 180, 181, 195–198 Taut, B., 129 Tetens, J.N., 7 Tondl, L., 152 de Tracy, A.D., 7 Trendelendburg, A., 186 Tvrdý, J., 46–50 Twardowski, K., 15, 192–194, 197

U Uebel, T., 58, 80, 125, 197 V Viceník, J., 154, 160–162 Vorovka, K., 111 W Weyl, H., 5 Wiener, L., 175 Wiener, N., 175, 181 Windelband, W., 47, 187 Wittgenstein, L., 3, 13–15, 81, 98, 139–142, 145–147, 150, 176, 178 Woleński, J., 193 Wolff, Ch., 79 Woodger, J., 196 von Wright, G.H., 176 Y Yarema, Y., 193 Yurynec’, V., 192, 194 Z Záviška, F., 64–66, 71 Zich, O., 173, 175 Zigo, M., 160 Zimmermann, R., 15, 28