Historical development of modern logic (Q1942092)

From MaRDI portal
scientific article
Language Label Description Also known as
English
Historical development of modern logic
scientific article

    Statements

    Historical development of modern logic (English)
    0 references
    15 March 2013
    0 references
    The article under review is a manuscript \textit{Jean van Heijenoort} never released; it was first published posthumously in [Mod. Log. 2, No. 3, 242--255 (1992; Zbl 0758.03004)] and was now included to a special, commemorative issue of the journal \textit{Logica Univeralis} (see [ibid. 6, No. 3--4, 249--267 (2012; Zbl 1268.03002)] for details). The article can quite naturally be broken down into three sections: (i) Frege (pp. 327--329); (ii) Löwenheim (pp. 329--331); and (iii) Herbrand (pp. 331--335; i.e., about half of the text). In accordance with distinctions the author had introduced earlier -- among others, in his better-known paper [``Logic as calculus and logic as language'', in: Boston Studies Philos. Sci. 3. Proc. Boston Colloq. Philos. Sci. 1964/66, 440--446 (1967; Zbl 0165.00809); Synthese 17, No. 3, 324--330 (1967; Zbl 0154.00305)] -- he portrays the development of logic in the hundred years from, roughly, 1870 to 1970 as the eventual synthesis of two different approaches to logic: Frege's syntactic approach universal in scope and Löwenheim's semantic approach limited to (fragments of) first-order logic. Both were amalgamated in the hands of Herbrand and in what the author sees as a direct consequence of the former's work: (semantic) tableaux and (analytic) trees. Reviewer's remarks: The reissue adds three new footnotes (3, 6, and 8 on pp. 328, 331, and 335, respectively) and features other minor updates (dates of death as well as footnotes 1 and 7 (on pp. 327 and 334)); it corrects a typo from the previous edition (see p. 331, footnote 6) and introduces two new ones: read ``definition'' instead of ``d'' on p. 327, line 8 from the top, and ``tables'' instead of ``tales'' on p. 334, line 7 from the top. If we take the manuscript's title at face value and expect a brief history of modern logic (and not, say, the (pre)history of the tree method), then its merits were already doubtful at the time it was composed in 1974 -- even if we grant that van Heijenoort was preoccupied with the tree method during that time (see p. 222 of [\textit{I. H. Anellis}, Van Heijenoort. Logic and its history in the work and writing of Jean van Heijenoort. Ames: Modern Logic Publ. (1994; Zbl 0822.01006)]). In light of its glaring omissions and blatant deficiencies the reasons for printing the manuscript a second time just escape me; I feel no one should be absolved from writing ``history'' like this (but compare \textit{I. H. Anellis}' introduction in [Log. Univers. 6, No. 3--4, 301--326 (2012; Zbl 1270.03007)]).
    0 references
    0 references
    history of logic
    0 references
    Jean van Heijenoort
    0 references
    Gottlob Frege
    0 references
    Leopold Löwenheim
    0 references
    Jaques Herbrand
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references

    Identifiers

    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references