On the Year of Publication of Tarski's ‘Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen’

Abstract

Drawing on recently published correspondence as well as on a survey of Polish and international philosophical activity published in 1937 and details concerning the publisher and bookseller Aleksander Mazzucato, I provide evidence that, contrary to some recent assertions (but in line with older bibliographical entries), Tarski's ‘Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen’ was not published in journal form until 1936, although preprints, lacking two corrections and a small addendum, were likely available in the late months of 1935.

Keywords:

• Tarski
• ‘Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen’
• 1935
• 1936

Mathematics Subject Classifications:

• 03-03
• 01A60

Acknowledgments

I have benefited hugely from the digitization of printed materials undertaken by various Polish institutions. I have made recourse to material held on-line by the Małopolska Digital Library, Krakow; the Wielkopolska Digital Library, Poznań; the Silesian Digital Library, Katowice; the Subcarpathian Digital Library, Rzeszów; the Kujawsko-Pomorska Digital Library at the Nicolas Copernicus University, Toruń; the Combined Libraries of the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology of the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Philosophical Society (Połączone Biblioteki WFiS UW, IFiS PAN i PTF) at the University of Warsaw; the University Library of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin; the University of the National Education Commission, Kraków; the Digital Repository of Scientific Institutes, Poznań. Google Translate has been a boon.

Notes

1 The Polish original seems to exist in two forms, one with the title of the series in which it appeared in both Polish and French and the title of the work itself in both Polish and French on the cover, one with only the title of the work and only in Polish.

2 I shall use the name by which the city is now most widely known. Capital of the Hapsburg crownlands of Galicia and Lodomeria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it bears the name ‘Lemberg’ in German. Part of Poland between the two world wars, it is known by the name ‘Lwów’ in Polish.

3 Given this translation credit, clear as day, it is a surprise to find Magda Stroińska and David Hitchcock attributing the translation to Tarski himself in the bibliography they attach to their translation of Tarski 1936d—see p. 196 of their English translation.

4 Gruber (2016, p. vi) and Woleński (2017, p. 83, n. 4) both report that Zygmunt Schmierer, a student of Adjukiewicz's [Gruber] and a logician [Woleński]—the only logician trained by Adjukiewicz (Woleński 1995, p. 367)—was first tasked with the translation but his work was rejected by Twardowski. I thank an anonymous referee for drawing this fact to my attention.

5 I owe this information to Dąbrowski 1981, Miskiewicz 2009, Żegleń 2018 and Płotka 2020. Schmierer too was a victim of the the Holocaust, disappearing in 1943.

6 See Gruber 2016, pp. 106–7 and Letter to Twardowski, 24.VII.35, Fig. 4.21, p. 142 & p. 172; see also Woleński 2017, p. 84. In their bibliography, Stroińska and Hitchcock say that the ‘Nachwort’ was completed on 13 April 1935 (Tarski 1936d, p. 196 of the English translation). Presumably it is the editors of Studia Philosophica who say, ‘“Nachwort” allatum est die 13. Aprilis 1935’ (Tarski 1936a, p. 405). It was received on the 13th of April. In his letter to Twardowski of 9th April, Tarski had said that he was sending the ‘Nachwort’ as well as corrections to the page-proofs (Gruber 2016, Letter to Twardowski, 9.IV.35, Fig. 4.15, p. 136 & p. 169) so presumably had completed it no later than that day; in a hand other than Tarski's, in a format common to the other letters received by Twardowski in the correspondence, Tarski's letter bears the date ‘13/4 935’ (Gruber 2016, Fig. 4.13, p. 134).

7 A handful of exceptions are known to me: Woleński 1996, Murawski 1999, Fenstad 2004, Niiniluoto 2004, Woleński 2005, 2009, Rautenberg 2010, Mendelson 2015 and all previous editions, Woleński 2016, Murzi and Rossi. 2020, Kennedy 2022. In other places Woleński gives 1935 as the year (e.g. 1989, 2018, 2019; Woleński and Simons. 1989).

8 What the absence of (single) quotation marks around the title of the article is intended to indicate, when they are present for every other article in the (revised and expanded) bibliography and italic is used for book titles, I am at a loss to say. Perhaps I should point out that I am working from a copy of the second printing of 1990; there were at least two later printings (see Corcoran 2013).

9 Kleene 1952, p. 536.

10 Church 1936, pp. 184–185.

11 Henkin et al. 1974, p. 488. In earlier work Henkin, who had been a graduate student of Church's then a colleague of Tarski's, had given 1936 as the year of publication (Henkin 1949, 1953).

12 Tarski's text was no. 34 in the monograph series. No. 33 was Jacques Herbrand's Recherches sur la théorie de la démonstration (Herbrand 1930). In both editions of Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, the Bibliographical Note on the first page of ‘The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages’ says that publication of Tarski's text was delayed, for reasons beyond his control, by two years (Tarski 1956/83, p. 152). Tarski had given lectures on the material to the Logic Section of the Warsaw Philosophical Society (Warszawskie Towarzystwo Filozoficzne), under the title ‘O pojęciu zdania prawdziwego w odniesieniu do sformalizowanych systemów dedukcyjnych’ (‘On the concept of true sentence in relation to formalized deductive systems’), on the 8th October, 1930 (Ruch Filozoficzny, XII (1–10), 1930–31, p. 228) and to the Polish Philosophical Society in Lviv, under the title ‘O pojęciu prawdy w odniesieniu do sformalizowanych nauk dedukcyjnych’ (‘On the concept of truth in reference to formalized deductive sciences’), on the 15th December, 1930 (idem, p. 210). A summary is given of the December talk (Tarski 1930–31). It opens with the assertion, ‘According to the intuitive understanding of the word “truth”, we say that the sentence “it is snowing” is true when and only when it is snowing’ [Zgodnie z intuicyjnem rozumieniem wyrazu ‘prawdziwośc’ mówimy, że zdanie ‘śnieg pada’ jest prawdziwe wtedy i tylko wtedy, gdy śnieg pada]. In the second edition of Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics the date of this talk is wrongly given as December 5, 1930 (p. 152). Tarski says that the two talks were given under the same title, ‘O pojęciu prawdy w odniesieniu do sformalizowanych nauk dedukcyjnych’ / ‘Ueber den Begriff der Wahrheit in Beziehung auf formalisierte deduktive Systeme’ / ‘On the Concept of Truth in relation to formalized deductive systems’ (Tarski 1933, p. 3; Tarski 1936a, p. 267; Tarski 1956/83, first edition, p. 154; second edition, p. 152).

Jan Łukasiewicz subsequently presented Tarski's work to the section for mathematical and physical sciences of the Warsaw Scientific Society on 21 March 1931 (Tarski 1932, p. 23; Tarski 1933, p. 3; Tarski 1936a, p. 267; Tarski 1956/83, first edition, p. 154; second edition, p. 152; cf . Ruch Filozoficzny, XII (1–10) 1930–31, p. 203). In its entirety, the published record of the presentation reads as follows (Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego Wydział III nauk matematyczno-fizycznych, XXIV (2–6) 1931, p. 183):

            Alfred Tarski.

                                            Pojęcie prawdy w językach nauk dedukcyjnych.

                                      Przestawił J. Łukasiewicz na posiedzeniu dn. 21 marca 1931 r.

            Praca wyjdzie in extenso w “Pracach Tow. Naukowego Warszawskiego”.

                                                          Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den Sprachen

                                                                      der deduktiven Disziplinen.

Mémoire présenté par M. J. Łukasiewicz dans la séance du 21 Mars 1931.

            Ce travail vient de paraître dans les “Travaux de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie”.

A brief summary of the main ideas and results of the work that did eventually appear in the monograph series Prace Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego / Travaux de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie was published in German in the following year (Tarski 1932).

13 Bookshop ‘Book’ A. Mazzucato published a number of books in 1936 including a short one, originally a journal article, by Leopold Blaustein on the sources and treatment of laziness in children and adolescents (Blaustein 1936). On the other hand, also published in 1936, Tarski's popular text O logice matematycznej i metodzie dedukcyjnej was published in Książnica-Atlas's Mathematical Library (Bibljoteczka Matematyczna) series (Tarski 1936f).

14 The Biuletyn was published between 1961 and 1987 before continuing for a short time as Lwów i Kresy. Biuletyn–Kwartalnik. The Koło Lwowian w Londynie carries on with, among other things, an on-line presence on facebook.

15 Brzezicki 1984, p. 44. Innym z wielu wychowanków Połonieckiego … był Aleksander Mazzucało [sic], nypierw dyrektor a od 1936 r. właściciel ‘Książnicy – Atlas’ we Lwowie. More bluntly and perhaps a little less accurately Ewa Wójcik (2001, p. 173) says that Mazzucato took over the company's two bookstores in Lviv in 1936. [Firma posiadała dwie księgarnie we Lwowie, którą w 1936 r. przejął Aleksander Mazzucato […].]

16 ‘Ilustrowany informator miasta Lwowa : ze spisem miejscowości województwa lwowskiego : na rok 1939’ can be found on-line at a number of websites including https://www.pbc.rzeszow.pl/dlibra/publication/2199/edition/2067?language=en.

17 The brief summary in Nowa Książka (vol. III (1936), issue 5, p. 303) describes Volume I of Studia Philosophica as published in Lwów in 1935, available from Księgarnia ‘Książka’ A. Mazzucato. Issue 10 (pp. 566–567) contains a report on Tarski 1936f by Bolesław Sobociński.

18 If I'm reading this correctly, the word Gruber translates using ‘copies’ is ‘odbitek’ which could, I believe, equally well be translated ‘offprints’.

19 A referee says that off-prints were sent to Carnap and Popper prior to publication of the first volume of Studia Philosophica. This may well be so. What is certainly the case is that both had seen galley-proofs (Woleński 2017, pp. 82, 84, 88); indeed Popper had corresponded directly with Twardowski regarding corrections to the galley-proofs late in August, 1935 (Gruber 2016, Figs. 4.25 & 4.26, pp. 146–147 & p. 173). Tarski was still sending corrections two months later (Gruber 2016, Figs. 4.32, 4.33 & 4.34, pp. 153–155 & pp. 175–177).

20 Despite this clear indication that there are 499 pages, the brief summary in Nowa Książka describes Volume I of Studia Philosophica as an octavo of 498 pages.

21 The dating of Ruch Filozoficzny is itself odd. Parts 1 to 4 of Volume XIII appeared together in 1936, notionally covering the years 1932 to 1936.

22 See Woodger 1952 and 1959 for examples of his approach; for a critical reaction see, for example, Dawson 1974; for a recent attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ his thinking, see Nicholson and Gawne 2014, 2015. See Popper 1981 for a more wide-ranging, if brief, sketch; for a longer portrait see Floyd and Harris 1964.

23 ‘Exemplar’ can be used for free copies given to an author by the publisher; ‘Sonderabdruck’ is a more exact term for offprint.

24 Tarski had wanted to order 100 to 200 additional copies [odbitek] from the printer (Gruber 2016, Letter to Twardowski, 9.IV.35, Fig. 4.15, p. 136 & p. 169) but balked at the cost (Gruber 2016, Letter to Twardowski, 24.VII.35, Fig. 4.21, p. 142 & p. 172).