Abstract
This paper provides an introduction to the joint work of Edward Poznański and Aleksander Wundheiler translated in this volume as ‘The Concept of Truth in Physics’. The view they formulated in the early 1930s occupies a unique place in the heritage of the Lvov-Warsaw School—and not only on account of its non-Tarskian, operationalist conception of truth. Their image of science, focused on its fallibility, anti-foundationalism, the limitedness of empirical control, conventionalism, holism, and physicalism, exhibits a far-reaching conformity with Neurath’s encyclopedism. This paper describes the background of the Poznański-Wundheiler collaboration and the history of the reception of their ideas and then discusses the viability of their concept of truth in comparison to Neurath’s much-criticised rejection of the notion of truth altogether.
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Notes
- 1.
Poznański met Kotarbiński already in 1913 when he was still a pupil in Mikołaj Rej Gimnasium in Warsaw and the latter was appointed there as a classic Greek and Latin teacher.
- 2.
Poznański was born into a rabbinic family but remained an atheist throughout his adult life. He was also quite negative about the term ‘national minorities’ which he thought of, it seems, as a socially disparaging description. In the multi-ethnic society of the inter-war Poland he felt neither like a Jew in a foreign country nor like a Pole with some Jewish ancestry, but rather simply as a Polish citizen. He seems to have upheld a similar attitude in Israel.
- 3.
- 4.
In a letter to Kotarbiński he wrote: ‘I am the Academic Secretary of the University here, something like a Registrar in English university—I am responsible for academic administration sensu stricto, i.e., I am the secretary of the Rector, of the Senate, I am responsible for administering of teaching in the faculties […], for stipends and prizes, for the relationships between the University and the totality of students (v. uneasy task)—and I have also a good dozen of various other troubles.’ (‘Jestem Sekretarzem Akademickim Uniwersytetu, coś na kształt Registrar w uniwersytecie angielskim—jestem odpowiedzialny za administrację akademicką stricte sensu, tj. jestem sekretarzem Rektora, Senatu, jestem odpowiedzialny za administrację nauczania w wydziałach […], za stypendia i nagrody, za stosunki między Uniwersytetem i ogółem studenckim (b. niełatwe zadanie)—i mam jeszcze dobry tuzin rozmaitych innych kłopotów’), Poznański to Kotarbiński, 11-04-1952 [zbiory archiwalne Połączonych Bibliotek Wydziału Filozofii i Socjologii UW, Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii PAN i Polskiego Towarzystwa Filozoficznego, Warszawa, Polska].
- 5.
From then on this journal was published without interruption which would not have been possible without Poznański’s hard work and his connections that enabled financial support of several institutions in the 1950s (for this information we thank Eva Shorr, the Associate Editor of Iyyun).
- 6.
For instance, the library of the Friends of the Hebrew University Society, which was shipped to Jerusalem in 1939, contained more than ten thousand of volumes (cf. Tentative (1946), p. 54).
- 7.
Poznański stayed in touch with philosophers in Poland, especially with Tadeusz Kotarbiński and his wife, Janina (alias Dina Sztejnbarg, 1901–1997), who was a philosopher of science. Some younger scholars, like Leszek Kołakowski, Jerzy Pelc, or Henryk Skolimowski, visited Israel on his invitation.
- 8.
Woleński (2007), p. 50. In 1971 in Jerusalem a two-day symposium was organized (April, 11–12) to celebrate Poznański’s seventieth birthday (cf. The Teaching, 1972). After his death a commemorative volume was issued (as a supplement to Iyyun, Vol. 25 (1974)), as well as a collection of his papers (Poznański 1980).
- 9.
A short information on Wundheiler and his relatives was published in Bańkowska (2010), p. 3.
- 10.
His dissertation, entitled in original: Geometria reonomiczna jako podstawa mechaniki absolutnej (1932), presented a generalized version of non-Euclidean (Riemannian) geometry; the results he obtained were published as Wundheiler (1933).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Excerpts of this memoir are published as L. Wundheiler (1991). They, however, do not include the passages where Alex’s journey to Europe is mentioned. In its entirety the manuscript of ‘Growing up in Nazi Germany’ is available in the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (USHMM 2009.406.1). (We thank Sofia Grachova, USHMM, for providing us with a copy of the document). Luitgard N. Wundheiler, née Albrecht-Natorp (b. 1922) was originally a German philologist (with PhD in 1948 at Marburg); she moved to US in the late 1940s, sought out Alex and married him in 1951.
- 14.
L. Wundheiler, USHMM 2009.406.1, p. 48. The further details of this journey remain unknown.
- 15.
Having heard about Wundheiler’s death in 1957 Karl Menger dedicated to him a paper he wrote that year (Menger 1958). Underneath the title of Wundheiler’s paper on ‘Irreversible Systems, Entropy and Riemann Spaces’ (1954) there is the following inscription: ‘Communicated by P. W. Bridgman’; the implicit recommendation by the Nobel Prize winner that this represents also indicates the high esteem in which Wundheiler’s academic work was held. Wundheiler also was a close friend of Zenon Waraszkiewicz (cf. Mioduszewski 2013, p. 135). Waraszkiewicz (1907–1946) was a topologist, known for the ‘Waraszkiewicz spirals’ which he made use of to give a negative answer to Hans Hahn’s question if there existed a universal metric continuum for which any other continuum would be a continuous image. Cf. van Dantzig et al. (1930), p. 357; Waraszkiewicz (1934).
- 16.
In the 1950s Poznański, together with Bar-Hillel, translated Tarski’s Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences (Tarski 1941) into Hebrew.
- 17.
Poznański also knew Carnap and personally communicated to him his current views while being in Prague for the 18th Zionistenkongress (21.08–04.09.1933). In the entry of 22.08.1933 Carnap wrote down in his diary: ‘Poznański from Warsaw here. (Because of a conference about the library of Jerusalem University). Recounts the seminar with Kotarbiński. He there defended his conception of the concept of truth and of testing in physics: cyclical process, an isolated sentence is not tested, but only in the system. He wants to write a paper about it, perhaps for Erkenntnis’ (‘Poznanski aus Warschau hier. (Wegen Konferenz über Jerusalemer Universitätsbibliothek). Erzählt vom Konversatorium bei Kotarbinski. Er hat dort seine Auffassung über Wahrheitsbegriff und Nachprüfung in der Physik vertreten: Kreisprozeß, nicht der einzelne Satz wird nachgeprüft, sondern nur im System. Er möchte darüber Aufsatz schreiben, vielleicht für Erkenntnis’ [ASP (RC) 025-75-11]).
- 18.
The Neurath’s collection in Haarlem (NL) contains only five letters from Poznański to Neurath, four from Neurath to Poznański, two from Wundheiler to Neurath and one from Neurath to Wundheiler. Most probably some items are missing.
- 19.
In one of his letters to Neurath in April, 1934, Poznański announced another paper which was, however, never published. Its subject-matter was outlined as follows: ‘Now we want to get down to the problem of pseudo-questions in physics. First it is about classification and, so to say, the categorization of various forms of physicalistic pseudo-questions and pseudo-sentences, e.g., relations without a relatum (‘Is the earth moving?’) or the creation of forbidden linkages from the legitimate terms of a theory (‘a state of an electron between two adjacent quantum orbits’) and so on. The second question which occupies us currently is the problem of technical and in principle impossibility. This question is always evaded or treated quite superficially, and for this [reason] it has fundamental meaning for various problems in methodology of physics.’ (‘Jetzt moechten wir das Problem der Scheinfragen in der Physik in Angriff nehmen. Zuerst geht es um Klassifizierung und sozusagen Kanonisierung verschiedener Formen von physikalischen Scheinfragen und Scheinsaetzen, z.B. Relation ohne Relatum („Bewegt sich die Erde?’) oder Bildung verbotener Verknuepfungen aus zulaessigen Termini der Theorie („Zustand eines Elektrons zwischen zwei benachbarten Quantenorbiten’) usw. Die zweite Frage, welche uns letztens bescheftigt [sic], das ist das Problem der technischen und der prinzipiellen Unmoeglichkeit. Diese Frage wird immer umgegangen oder ganz oberflaechlich behandelt, und dabei ist sie von grundlegender Bedeutung fuer verschiedenen Probleme der Methodologie der Physik,’ Poznański to Neurath, 08-04-1934; quoted by permission of the Wiener Kreis Stichting [WKS], Rijksarchief, Haarlem, Netherlands, all rights reserved).
- 20.
- 21.
Poznański developed this idea further in his (1932).
- 22.
The use of the ‘method of coincidence’ phrase, widely associated with Schlick’s epistemological writings, esp. on the theory of relativity, suggests familiarity with his work as well. Cf. Schlick (1917), pp. 34–35 (English translation: Schlick (2005), pp. 49–50); Schlick (1918), pp. 234–237 (English translation: Schlick (1974), pp. 272–276). See also Glassner (2009), pp. 162 ff.
- 23.
‘This fascinating methodological problem, with which Poznański and Wundheiler were occupied here in the 30s, did not meet with any response in the works of other our logicians and methodologists, alas’ (Ajdukiewicz 1978, p. 313, translation changed). On the Vienna Circle’s protocol sentence debate see Uebel (2007). A late and off-beat response can be discerned in Ludwik Fleck’s (1935).
- 24.
This volume was followed up by two other collections of papers written in honor of Kotarbiński (in 1959 and 1967).
- 25.
Hempel mentioned Poznański and Wundheiler in a letter to Neurath (22-09-1938 [ASP (RC) 102-46-17]) à propos Tarski’s views on the philosophy of science. Hempel did not refer to them in his paper on truth published one year earlier (1937).
- 26.
‘Der Begriff der Wahrheit auf dem Gebiete der Physik’; undated copies exist in both the Carnap and the Neurath Nachlass [ASP (RC) 081-37-01; WKS 393/R.48]. In the mid-1930s Rand was working on her dissertation on Kotarbiński (for which she received her PhD in 1938) and this is how she could have learnt about Poznański and Wundheiler’s paper. Another possibility is that Rand summarized the paper at Neurath’s suggestion (in 1937 he wanted to hire her for preparing summaries of current Polish philosophical literature: see Neurath to Rand, 03-09-1937 [WKS]). The conjecture is that she prepared the German summary at the end of 1937 or in the first half of 1938 (see previous note). Still another possibility is that Neurath asked her earlier having learnt about the publication of the Festschrift and knowing from his meetings with Poznański and Wundheiler that they published their paper there.
- 27.
And some of the Circle’s early critics, too. In his report on Studia Philosophica (a journal edited by Ajdukiewicz and Ingarden, established in 1935 to promote Polish philosophy in Western languages) Julius Weinberg (author of An Examination of Logical Positivism, 1936) mentioned the Poznański-Wundheiler paper in the context of Neurath’s proposal to replace ‘truth’ with some other term and related concerns by Popper and Reichenbach (see Weinberg 1938, p. 74, fn. 4).
- 28.
Some methodological views from ‘The Concept of Truth in Physics’ were summarized in Giedymin (1986), pp. 206–209.
- 29.
Already in 1936 Maria Kokoszyńska, a prominent Lvov-Warsaw School member, published a paper in defense of semantics and the ‘absolute concept of truth’ arguing against, among others, the view held by Poznański and Wundheiler (see Kokoszyńska 1936, p. 143, fn. 1).
- 30.
In his early writings Neurath also talked about ‘the system of hypotheses of physics’ (cf. Neurath 1983a [1916], p. 24).
- 31.
See §11 of their paper below.
- 32.
Cf. ibid., §§18 and 34. Their claim that ‘sometimes we acknowledge two different and even mutually inconsistent truths (e.g., the wave and the quantum theory of light) at the same time’ (ibid., §34) should not be confused with another according to which the existence of ‘two equally formed cycles’ in physics (i.e. cycles of justification) is a mere possibility (something they found to be a consequence of their position). Such two cycles would be mutually inconsistent but ‘equally coherent and equally verified’ (ibid., §18), and the (rational) choice between them would be permanently precluded. However, they add, such situation, i.e., ‘[…] the creation of two equally probable cycles,’ is practically possible in the humanities.
- 33.
- 34.
‘Es wirkt sehr staerkend, wenn man erfaehrt, dass Menschen aus verschieden Kreisen ganz unabhaengig voneinander zu denselben oder verwandten Ergebnissen gelangen. Da kann man doch vermuten, dass der eingeschlagene Weg richtige ist’ (Poznański to Neurath, 08-04-1934 [WKS]).
- 35.
‘Es ist sehr stärkend, so ähnliche Gedankengänge zu finden’ (Neurath to Poznański, 11-04-1934 [WKS]). Neurath also consulted Poznański on his philological interpretations of the parable of the burning bush from Exodus.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
In the 1950s, Poznański—in another Kotarbiński’s Festschrift and still as a follower of operationalism—wrote that his works with Wundheiler were more enthusiastic than critical and that they would require far-reaching corrections (Poznański 1959, p. 181).
- 39.
Tarski introduced his book to the Polish publisher on March 21, 1931. He presented its summary already in December 1930 (cf. Tarski 1930/1931), pp. 210–211). In 1930 Tarski lectured on semantic theory of truth at least twice (in Lvov and Warsaw). He soon took care to communicate his results outside of Poland (cf. Tarski 1932, pp. 23–25). See also McFarland et al. (2014), pp. 356 and 361–363.
- 40.
Poznański (2010), p. 147. This was also Neurath’s complaint about semantics. See e.g. Neurath (1983c [1937/1938]), p. 206; the vast majority of his doubts Neurath expressed in his correspondence, mainly with Carnap, Frank, Hempel, and Tarski). Neurath not only thought that semantics was useless beyond the formal domain but he was also convinced that it was dangerous for development of science and even for democracy (see Koterski 2010, §3.3).
- 41.
Neurath wanted to respond to Carnap and Kokoszyńska but the plan, which he entitled ‘Wahrheit eines Satzes,’ [WKS 212/K.127] was never materialized.
- 42.
Kokoszyńska (1934). This is the only written response to their work that was published in the inter-war years in Poland. The typically critical comments from Polish colleagues came after the war and often were politically motivated. Thus, the Poznański-Wundheiler paper was criticized by Marxist-Leninists who, unsurprisingly, declared it to be arch-reactionary expression of idealism and relativism (cf. Schaff 1959, pp. 434–442).
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Koterski, A., Uebel, T. (2017). Poznański and Wundheiler’s ‘The Concept of Truth in Physics’: The Lvov-Warsaw School Contribution to Encyclopedism. In: Brożek, A., Stadler, F., Woleński, J. (eds) The Significance of the Lvov-Warsaw School in the European Culture. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52869-4_14
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