[FOM] JEAN VAN HEIJENOORT CENTENARY

[Irving]

LOGICA UNIVERSALIS

SPECIAL ISSUE

JEAN VAN HEIJENOORT CENTENARY

edited by
Irving H. Anellis
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis



Jean van Heijenoort
1912­1986


23 July 2012 marks the centenary of the birth of 
historian and philosopher of logic Jean van 
Heijenoort, whose anthology From Frege to Goedel 
helped define the nature and scope of modern 
mathematical logic for several generations of 
logicians and the canon of fundamental works that 
comprise the text for the formative period of 
mathematical logic as we know it today. His 
influence in the history of mathematical logic 
was furthered by his work as the editor of the 
papers of Jacques Herbrand and in his 
contributions to the publication of the 
multi-volume Collected Works of Kurt Gödel. The 
articles, published and unpublished, that were 
brought together in his Selected Essays 
articulated his conception of the course of the 
origin and development of mathematical logic. His 
El dessarollo de la teoria de la cuantificacion 
provided an exposition of the "family of formal 
systems" that comprise quantification theory and 
its proof procedures: the axiomatic method, 
itself comprised of Frege-type systems and 
Hilbert-type systems; Herbrand quantification; 
natural deduction; and the Gentzen sequent 
calculus, which van Heijenoort enumerated as the 
four principal approaches to first-order 
predicate calculus. He briefly examined the 
history of each and considered them in their 
classical, intuitionistic, and minimal versions 
and compared the strengths and weaknesses of each.

As editor of From Frege to Goedel, van Heijenoort 
exercised a critical influence on the 
historiography of logic through much of the 
second half of the twentieth century. Although 
aspects of his views on the nature and scope of 
mathematical logic have more recently been 
challenged, as have aspects of his conception of 
the history of mathematical logic, his ideas 
remain of continuing influence among historians 
and philosophers of logic and frequently serve as 
the starting point in discussions which challenge 
his views, for example, his often exaggerated 
emphasis on the pivotal work of Gottlob Frege and 
corresponding comparative neglect of the 
contributions of Frege's contemporaries among the 
algebraic logicians, and in particular of Charles 
Sanders Peirce and Ernst Schröder. Thus van 
Heijenoort's work continues to occupy a 
significant place in the historiography and philosophy of logic.

In addition to his historical work, van 
Heijenoort left a body of manuscripts and 
typescripts, many of which were distributed to a 
handful of close colleagues and to his Brandeis 
University logic students, and in which he 
explored the model-theoretic properties of the 
falsifiability tree method, particularly its 
soundness and completeness, and the relation 
between the truth tree and falsifiability tree 
methods and its ancestors, in particular Herbrand 
quantification and Beth tableaux. In his 
Introduction a la sémantique des logiques 
non-classiques, van Heijenoort applied the tree 
method to intuitionistic and modal logic.

We invite contributions to the special issue of 
Logica Universalis devoted to any and all aspects 
of van Heijenoort’s work in logic, its history 
and philosophy. Contributions for consideration 
should be sent in PDF to the guest editor Irving 
H. Anellis at ianellis at iupui.edu.


Publication schedule:
Initial submission: 31 January 2012
Preview copy: 31 March 2012
Final copy: 31 May 2012
Publication target date: 23 July 2012



Sincerely,

Irving H. Anellis
Visiting Research Associate
Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought
902 W. New York St.
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159
USA
URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info