Giovanni Vailati (24 April 1863 – 14 May 1909) was an Italian proto-
analytic philosopher
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United St ...
,
historian of science
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...
, and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
.
Life
Vailati was born in
Crema, Lombardy
Crema (; Eastern Lombard, Cremasco: ) is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Cremona, in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is built along the river Serio River, Serio at from Cremona. It is also the seat of the Catholic Bishop of C ...
, and studied
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
at the
University of Turin
The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...
. He went on to lecture in the history of
mechanics
Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects r ...
there from 1896 to 1899, after working as assistant to
Giuseppe Peano
Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The stand ...
and
Vito Volterra
Vito Volterra (, ; 3 May 1860 – 11 October 1940) was an Italian mathematician and physicist, known for his contributions to mathematical biology and integral equations, being one of the founders of functional analysis.
Biography
Born in Anc ...
. He resigned his university post in 1899 so that he could pursue his independent studies, making a living from high-school mathematics teaching. During his lifetime he became internationally known, his writings having been translated into
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
French, and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, though he was largely forgotten after his death in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. He was rediscovered in the late 1950s. He did not publish any complete books, but left about 200 essays and reviews across a range of academic disciplines.
Philosophy
Vailati's view of philosophy was that it provided a preparation and the tools for scientific work. For that reason, and because philosophy should be neutral between rival beliefs, conceptions, theoretical structures, etc., the philosopher should avoid the use of special technical language, but should use the language that he finds used in those areas in which he is interested. That is not to say that the philosopher should merely accept whatever he finds; an ordinary-language term may be problematic, but its deficiencies should be corrected rather than replacing it with some new technical term.
His view of truth and meaning was influenced by philosophers such as
C.S. Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
and
Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach ...
. He carefully distinguished between meaning and truth: "the question of determining ''what we mean'' when we propound a given proposition is entirely different from the question of deciding ''whether it is true or false''. Nevertheless, having decided what is meant, the work of deciding whether it is true or false is crucial. Vailati held a moderate
positivist view, in both science and philosophy:
"it must be demanded of anybody who advances a thesis that he be capable of indicating the facts which according to him should obtain (or have obtained) if his thesis were true, and also their difference from other facts which according to him would obtain (or have obtained) if it were not true"
Vailati's influences and contacts were many and varied, belying the oversimple label often attached to him: "the Italian pragmatist". While owing much to Peirce and
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
(between whose thought he was one of the first to distinguish), he also acknowledged the influence of
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and
George Berkeley
George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immate ...
(both of whom he saw as important precursors of, or influences on, pragmatism),
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathem ...
,
Victoria Welby-Gregory,
G.E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
,
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
, Peano, and
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of F ...
. He corresponded with many of his contemporaries.
His early work included papers on
symbolic logic
Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal ...
, focusing on its rôle in philosophy, and distinguishing between logic and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
.
History of science
Vailata's main historical interests concerned mechanics,
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, and
geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
, and he was an important contributor to a number of areas, including the study of post-
Aristotelian Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
mechanics, of
Galileo's predecessors, of the notion and rôle of
definition
A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...
in the work of Plato and
Euclid
Euclid (; grc-gre, Wikt:Εὐκλείδης, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the ''Euclid's Elements, Elements'' trea ...
, of mathematical influences on logic and epistemology, and of the
non-Euclidean geometry
In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean geo ...
of
Gerolamo Saccheri. He was particularly interested in the ways in which what might be seen as the same problems are addressed and dealt with at different times.
His historical work was interrelated with his philosophical work, involving the same fundamental views and methodology. Vailati saw the two as differing in approach rather than subject matter, and believed that there should be co-operation between philosophers and scientists in the pursuit of historical studies. He also held that a complete history demanded that one take into account the relevant social background.
Of a certain interest is the participation of Vailati in the scientific activity of the chair of "Calculus infinitesimal" held by Giuseppe Peano. We are in Turin in 1892. The period is full of ''
Prolusions'' and there are the emergence of disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, which have produced a new scientific concept in the nineteenth century. The ''Turin Prolusions'' (1896-1898) open the horizon to new discoveries and to the formulations of scientific theories and hypotheses concerning the relationship between science and its history. In this context there is the "questions of words", which concern language and its functioning as a means of transmitting ideas.
The superseding of scientific theories and other results doesn't involve their destruction, for their importance is increased by their being superseded: "Every error shows us a rock to be avoided, while not every discovery shows us a path to be followed''.
[Scritti, 4]
See also
*
Separation relation In mathematics, a separation relation is a formal way to arrange a set of objects in an unoriented circle. It is defined as a quaternary relation ' satisfying certain axioms, which is interpreted as asserting that ''a'' and ''c'' separate ''b'' from ...
Notes
Sources
* Giovanni Vailati (1972
Scritti filosofici
*
*
Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Ivor Owen Grattan-Guinness (23 June 1941 – 12 December 2014) was a historian of mathematics and logic.
Life
Grattan-Guinness was born in Bakewell, England; his father was a mathematics teacher and educational administrator. He gained his bac ...
(2000) ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940'',
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
.
* Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1967) "Giovanni Vailati", in ''The Encyclopedia of Philosophy", ed.
Paul Edwards. Collier Macmillan
* C. Arrighi, P. Cantù, M. De Zan and P. Suppes (editors) (2010) '' Logic and Pragmatism. Selected Essays by Giovanni Vailati'',
CSLI, Stanford, California.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vailati, Giovanni
1863 births
1909 deaths
19th-century archaeologists
Historians of science
19th-century Italian mathematicians
19th-century Italian philosophers
Analytic philosophers