Abstract
Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), philosopher, mathematician and theologian, was the most important figure in Bohemia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In mathematics, he and others put the infinitesimal calculus on firm foundations. His Paradoxes of the Infinite (1851) prepared Cantor’s and Dedekind’s set theory. His monumental Theory of Science (1837) is an inquiry into the structure of science whose core is formal logic. Contrary to Bolzano’s logical apriorism, Ernst Mach (1838–1916) developed science on strictly empiricist foundations.
The philosopher, sociologist and politician Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) renewed Czech philosophy by his works on suicide and on Marxism. His Concrete Logic (1885 in Czech), a study of the classification of sciences, is conceived in the spirit of Auguste Comte, but against Comte it makes room for psychology as the source of evidence and certainty. The most personal passages reflect discussions with Robert Zimmermann and Edmund Husserl.
The thinkers in the Czech lands developed all the ingredients of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle: Bolzano’s logic, Mach’s empiricism, Mach’s opposition to metaphysics, Masaryk’s philosophy of language as well as the attention he paid to Marxism and to the social question. The Viennese Otto Neurath always stressed the importance of the scholastic roots of Bolzano’s logic which preserved Austria from the Kantian parenthesis and from the excesses of German idealism.
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Notes
- 1.
Hans Hahn , Reelle Funktionen. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft 1932, p.187.
- 2.
Karl Menger , Dimensionstheorie. Leipzig – Berlin: B. G. Teubner 1928.
- 3.
Bernard Bolzano , Theory of Science III. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014, § 303. Abbreviated as TS.
- 4.
Ibid., § 303, n°1.
- 5.
Ibid., § 303, n°4.
- 6.
Ibid., § 303, n°12.
- 7.
Ibid., § 304.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid., § 301, n°19.
- 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.
- 11.
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.
- 12.
Karl Popper, “Three Worlds”, The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, delivered at the University of Michigan, section VIII, April 7, 1978.
- 13.
Bolzano, TS II. § 148, n°3, p. 59.
- 14.
Ibid., § 154, p. 71.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Bold letters represent sets or sequences, ordinary letters propositions or variable ideas.
- 18.
Ibid. § 161.
- 19.
Ibid., § 155, n°2, p. 80.
- 20.
Bernard Bolzano , “On the Best State”, in: Selected Writings on Ethics and Politics, Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi 2007, pp. 233–358.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 205.
- 22.
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.
Ernst Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations. Chicago–London: Open Court 1897, p. 183.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 287.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 10.
- 27.
Ibid., p. 153. Such intellectual discomfort can be produced by incompleteness, contradictions and other logical shortcomings.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 162.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 171.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 168.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 169.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 172.
- 33.
Ernst Mach, Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre. Leipzig: J.A. Barth 1900, p. 184.
- 34.
Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, op. cit., p. 187.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 177.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 177n.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 178.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 179.
- 40.
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.
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.)
- 42.
Ibid., p. 166.
- 43.
Emile Durkheim, Le suicide. Paris: P. U. F. 1896, p. 424.
- 44.
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).
- 45.
Karel Čapek , Hovory s T. G. Masarykem [Conversations with T. G. Masaryk]. Praha: Československý spisovatel 1990.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 226.
- 47.
Versuch einer konkreten Logik, p. 117.
- 48.
Masaryk, Versuch einer konkreten Logik, op. cit., p. 250.
- 49.
Ibid., p. 263.
- 50.
Čapek , Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, op. cit., p. 226.
- 51.
Ibid., p 219.
- 52.
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).
- 53.
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.
- 54.
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).
- 55.
Tomáš G. Masaryk, Otázka sociální. Praha: Jan Laichter 1898, vol. I, Pref., p.VII.
- 56.
Karl Marx , The Capital I. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co. 1906, chap. 1, p. 4.
- 57.
Karl Marx , The Capital III. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co. 1909, chap. 2, p. 335.
- 58.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke XVIII. Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1956-, p. 161.
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Šebestík, J. (2020). How Philosophers in the Czech Lands Broke Ground for the Vienna Circle. In: Schuster, R. (eds) The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_1
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