Kluwer Academic Publishers
Nijhoff International Philosophy Series,
vol. 54 (1998)
ISBN 0-7923-4504-5
Stanislaw Leśniewski (1886-1939) was one of the leading Polish logicians and
a cofounder of the Warsaw School of Logic whose membership included,
beside himself, Jan Łukasiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Alfred Tarski, and
many others. In his lifetime Leśniewski published only a few hundred pages. He
produced many important results in the area of logic and the foundations of
mathematics; these stood in various relations to each other, and to materials
produced by others, and, in time, created more and more editorial problems. Very
many were left unpublished at the time of his death. Then in 1944 in the fire of
Warsaw the whole lot of this material was burned and lost -- a considerable loss
since a great deal of what is important could have been reconstructed from
these notes.
This book aims at presenting unique Leśniewski's materials from alternative
sources comprising lecture notes taken during some of Leśniewski's lectures
and seminars delivered at the University of Warsaw between the two world wars.
Already at the time of his death it was realized that these notes would provide a
unique access to Leśniewski's own thought as well as a valuable record
of some of the activities of the Warsaw School of Logic. It was not until
1988 when the notes were finally published.
This book is a part of The Leśniewski Collection consisting of:
- Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology,
J. T. J. Srzednicki, V. F. Rickey and J. Czelakowski eds.;
Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 13,
Ossolineum and Kluwer Academic Publishers (1984).
- S. Leśniewski's Lecture Notes in
Logic.
J. T. J. Srzednicki and Z. Stachniak, eds.,
Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 24.
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Stanisław Leśniewski: Collected Works,
S. J. Surma, J. T. J. Srzednicki, and D. I. Barnett, eds.; with
an Annotated Bibliography by V. F. Rickey,
Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 44,
PWN -- Polish Scientific Publishers and Kluwer Academic
Publishers (1992).
- Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic,
J. T. J. Srzednicki and Z. Stachniak eds.; Z. Stachniak volume
editor, Kluwer Academic Publishers (1998).
Contents
Translator's Foreword
PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
1. From the foundations of Protothetic
2. Definitions and theses of Leśniewski's Ontology
3. Class theory
PART TWO: PEANO ARITHMETIC AND WHITEHEAD'S THEORY OF EVENTS
4. Primitive terms of arithmetic
5. Inductive definitions
6. Whitehead's theory of events
|
ZBIGNIEW STACHNIAK
