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 Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History
and Philosophy of Mathematics
Société canadienne d’histoire
et de philosophie des mathématiques

Maria Zack
Dirk Schlimm
Editors

Research in
History and
Philosophy
of Mathematics
The CSHPM 2018 Volume
Proceedings of the Canadian Society for
History and Philosophy of Mathematics/
Société canadienne d’histoire et de
philosophie des mathématiques

Series Editors
Maria Zack, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA, USA
Dirk Schlimm, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13877

Maria Zack • Dirk Schlimm
Editors

Research in History and

Philosophy of Mathematics
The CSHPM 2018 Volume
Editors
Maria Zack Dirk Schlimm
Point Loma Nazarene University McGill University
San Diego, California, USA Montreal, Québec, Canada

ISSN 2366-3308 ISSN 2366-3316 (electronic)

Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/
Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques
ISBN 978-3-030-31196-4 ISBN 978-3-030-31298-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31298-5

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

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Editorial Board

The editors wish to thank the following people who served on the editorial board
for this volume:
Amy Ackerberg−Hastings
Independent Scholar
Eisso Atzema
University of Maine Orono
Christopher Baltus
State University New York College of Oswego
Janet Heine Barnett
Colorado State University—Pueblo
Moritz Bodner
McGill University
Daniel Curtin
Northern Kentucky University
David DeVidi
University of Waterloo
Craig Fraser
University of Toronto
David Gaber
McGill University
Jean-Pierre Marquis
Université de Montréal

v
vi Editorial Board

Duncan Melville
St. Lawrence University
Julien Ouellette-Michaud
McGill University
Dirk Schlimm
McGill University
James Tattersall
Providence College
Valérie Therrien
McGill University
Glen Van Brummelen
Quest University
Maria Zack
Point Loma Nazarene University
Preface

This volume contains ten papers that provide some interesting insights into contem-
porary scholarship in the history and philosophy of mathematics. The Canadian
Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics has compiled this research.
The volume begins with V. Frederick Rickey’s “Professor Bolesław Sobociǹski
and Logic at Notre Dame.” Sobociǹski was a Polish mathematician who was active
in the Polish underground in World War II. He eventually escaped to Brussels and
immigrated to the United States where he joined the faculty of the University of
Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, Sobociǹski started a thriving logic program and
founded the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. Rickey’s paper provides some
fascinating glimpses into Sobociǹski’s life and work.
From this beginning, the volume moves on to a collection of papers about
twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics. In “Fred Sommers’ Notations for
Aristotelian Logic,” Daniel Lovsted discusses Fred Sommers’ (1923–2014) creation
of a formal system for Aristotelian logic, which Sommers called Traditional
Formal Logic (TFL). In this paper, Lovsted uses TFL’s early development as a
valuable case study of the complexity which underlies notational decisions. In
“L’equivalence duale de categories: a third way of analogy?” Aurélien Jarry uses
the work of Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) as a starting point for discussing
analogies between commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. Jarry looks at
explaining analogy via the preservation/projection of structure (structure-mapping
theory), in terms of common laws or axioms (approach axiomatic), and equivalence
(in the technical sense of the category theory).
José Antonio Pérez-Escobar continues the scholarship of the philosophy of
mathematics with “Mathematical Modelling and Teleology in Biology.” This paper
discusses the notion that the mathematization of biology is creating a process in
biology that puts it in line with the standards of rigor of the physical sciences.
Pérez-Escobar challenges this idea by examining how teleological notions, which
are common in biology, coexist and interact with modeling techniques in a very
idiosyncratic scientific practice that does not exist in the physical sciences. In
“Arithmetic, Culture, and Attention,” Jean-Charles Pelland discusses the study of
numerical cognition which has accumulated scores of data on cognitive systems

vii
viii Preface

that could be involved in the uniquely human ability to practice formal arithmetic.
An externalist point of view holds that our interaction with external support for
cognition like fingers, numerals, and number words, explains what allows us to
go beyond the size and precision limitations of the cognitive systems we are born
with. This paper challenges the externalist answer to the origins of our arithmetical
skills and argues in favor of an internalist approach to the development of formal
arithmetical skills.
The section on philosophy closes with Gregory Lavers’ provocatively titled “Did
Frege Solve One of Zeno’s Paradoxes ?” Of Zeno’s book of forty paradoxes, it
was the first that attracted Socrates’ attention. This is the paradox of the like and
the unlike. Contemporary assessments of this paradox indicate that it is Zeno’s
weakest surviving paradox. All of these assessments, however, rely heavily on
reconstructions of the paradox. It is only relative to these reconstructions that there
is nothing paradoxical involved. In this paper Lavers puts forward and defends a
novel interpretation of this paradox, according to which the concept of a unit plays a
central role. If this interpretation is correct, then the paradox that Zeno presented was
the same as one discussed and solved in Gottlob Frege’s (1848–1925) Grundlagen
der Arithmetik.
This volume continues with two papers on nineteenth-century history of mathe-
matics. First in “Charles Davies as a Philosopher of Mathematics,” Amy Ackerberg-
Hastings examines Charles Davies’ (1798–1876) book The Logic and Utility of
Mathematics, With the Best Methods of Instruction Explained and Illustrated
(1850). This text has been called “first American book on mathematics teaching
methods,” and Ackerberg-Hastings provides detailed insights into this book and
its historical significance. In “Gauss et le modèle du champ magnétique terrestre,”
Roger Godard and John de Boer discuss “Allgemeine Theorie des Erdmagnetis-
mus,” Carl Friedrich Gauss’ (1777–1855) famous article on the modeling of the
terrestrial magnetic field. Benefiting from the previous scientific knowledge about
gravitational theory, Gauss assumed that the earth is surrounded by a magnetic
potential which obeys the Laplace equation, and Gauss solved this equation in
spherical coordinates. In order to do this work, Gauss needed data from terrestrial
magnetic observatories. This paper gives a brief history of magnetic observations
and examines the validity of Gauss’ approach and his results.
In “A Gaussian Tale for the Classroom: Lemniscates, Arithmetic-Geometric
Means, and More,” Janet Heine Barnett examines some of Carl Friedrich Gauss’
(1777–1855) work on the lemniscate. Barnett argues that Gauss’ path to these
discoveries is an example of the powerful role which analogy and numerical
experimentation can play within mathematics and one well worth sharing with
today’s students. This paper describes a set of three “mini-primary source projects”
based on excerpts from Gauss’ mathematical diary and related manuscripts, which
are designed to tell that tale while also serving to consolidate student proficiency
with several standard topics studied in first-year calculus courses.
The volume closes with Christopher Baltus’ “Philippe de la Hire: Was He
Desargues’ Schüler ?” Philippe de la Hire (1640–1718) was the third of the
seventeenth-century pioneers of projective geometry, after Girard Desargues (1591–
Preface ix

1661) and Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Little is known about La Hire beyond
what he tells us in his various published works and what Bernard de Fontenelle
reported in his Eloge, issued soon after La Hire’s death. It has been claimed that
Desargues’ work strongly influenced La Hire’s Nouvelle Méthode en Géométrie
pour les Sections des Superficies coniques et Cylindriques (1673). Baltus compares
the work of Desargues and La Hire shows that Desargues’ influence was minimal.
This collection of papers contains several gems from the history and philosophy
of mathematics, which will be enjoyed by a wide mathematical audience. This
collection was a pleasure to assemble and contains something of interest for
everyone.

San Diego, CA, USA Maria Zack

Montreal, QC, Canada Dirk Schlimm
Contents

Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

V. Frederick Rickey
Fred Sommers’ Notations for Aristotelian Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Daniel Lovsted
L’équivalence duale de catégories: A Third Way of Analogy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Aurélien Jarry
Mathematical Modelling and Teleology in Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
José Antonio Pérez-Escobar
Arithmetic, Culture, and Attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Jean-Charles Pelland
Did Frege Solve One of Zeno’s Paradoxes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Gregory Lavers
Charles Davies as a Philosopher of Mathematics Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Amy Ackerberg-Hastings
Gauss et le modèle du champ magnétique terrestre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Roger Godard and John de Boer
A Gaussian Tale for the Classroom: Lemniscates,
Arithmetic-Geometric Means, and More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Janet Heine Barnett
Philippe de la Hire: Was He Desargues’ Schüler? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Christopher Baltus

xi
Contributors

Amy Ackerberg-Hastings Independent Scholar, Rockville, MD, USA

Christopher Baltus SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY, USA
Janet Heine Barnett Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo, CO, USA
John de Boer Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, Canada
Roger Godard Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, Canada
Aurélien Jarry Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
Gregory Lavers Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Daniel Lovsted McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Jean-Charles Pelland Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada
José Antonio Pérez-Escobar ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
V. Frederick Rickey United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA

xiii
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic
at Notre Dame

V. Frederick Rickey

Abstract Bolesław Sobociński (1906–1980) received his Ph.D. in 1936 under the
direction of Jan Łukasiewicz (1878–1960) and then served as assistant to Stanisław
Leśniewski (1886–1939). This close contact with the two founders of the Warsaw
School of Logic determined the course of his research.
Active in the Polish underground during WW II, he escaped to Brussels where
he worked for several years and then emigrated to the USA. After a few years in St.
Paul, MN, he joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame where he started
a thriving logic program, directed students to their Ph.D.s, and founded the Notre
Dame Journal of Formal Logic, which he edited for 19 years. We will discuss his
interesting life and make some remarks about his contributions to logic.

1 Sobociński’s Early Life

Information about Sobociński’s early life and how he escaped from Poland is
very sparse.1 In 1957, he prepared a curriculum vitae for a proposal to the Ford

1 This note was prompted by a biographical article entitled “Bolesław Sobociński: The Ace of
the Second Generation of the LWS,” by Kordula Świ˛etorzecka, pp. 599–613 in The Lvov-Warsaw
School. Past and Present, Birkhäuser (2018), edited by Ángel Garrido and Urszula Wybraniec-
Skardowska. It treats Sobociński’s life and work in Poland, but says little about his time after that.
Consequently this note that deals primarily with his life in the USA.
Full Disclosure: I attended Sobociński’s lectures on Leśniewski’s logical systems from the
spring of 1962 until I received my Ph.D. under his direction in 1968 for a dissertation on An
Axiomatic Theory of Syntax. I then kept in close contact with him until his death. Since he died 39
years ago in 1980, I may escape the curse of writing about recent history. Also, what is contained
below is based on documents. Even most of my personal comments were recorded before 1983.

V. F. Rickey ()
United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

M. Zack, D. Schlimm (eds.), Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics,
Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/
Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31298-5_1
2 V. F. Rickey

Foundation to edit a volume of English translations of Leśniewski’s works (which

came to nought). It will provide a good introduction to his early life and of his view
of what he did during WW II, so I quote it in full:
I was born on June 28, 1906. I received my high school certificate in 1926 and in the same
year entered Warsaw University in Poland. Primary emphasis in all my university work
was placed on Symbolic Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics. In 1930 I received
a Master’s degree in Philosophy and in 1936 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In 1938
Warsaw University granted me the status of Lecturer in Logic with the title of Privat Dozent.
From 1934 I was assistant and from 1937 senior assistant at the chair of the Philosophy
of Mathematics of Prof. S. Lesniewski at Warsaw University. During World War II, which
I spent in my native Poland, I conducted courses in philosophy, logic and foundations
of mathematics in the underground Warsaw University. In 1945 I accepted an invitation
from the University of Lodz to become a Professor of the Theory of Deductive Sciences.
Late in 1945 I was warned that because of my anticommunist activities I was wanted by
Russian and Polish communist secret police. It was necessary to go into hiding and in 1946
I succeeded in escaping from Poland into Belgium. I lived there from 1946–1949 and was
employed in the Polish Scientific Institute in Brussels. In December 1949 I emigrated to the
U.S.A. and from the beginning of 1951 I have been associated with the Institute of Applied
Logic (Minneapolis, Minn.) in connection with various research activities. My work for
the Institute has included the development of interpretations of logical systems in terms of
computing machine design. From the autumn of 1956 I have been lecturing in symbolic
logic at Notre Dame University. I became a citizen of U.S.A. in 1955.
South Bend, July 20, 1957.

In this short autobiographical note many things were omitted, so we supply what
we can. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sobociński was the only child of Waleria
and Antoni Sobociński, both of whom were Polish. He was educated at home by his
father, an engineer, and by private tutors before he attended the Catholic Gymnasium
of Saint Catherine of Alexandria Church in St. Petersburg from 1916 to 1918. His
parents withdrew him as the gymnasium had become nationalized and a Bolshevik
curriculum was introduced. Partly because of this experience he held strong anti-
communistic views throughout his life. The family moved to Warsaw in October
1922 where Sobociński took the Academic Matriculation Courses and passed the
matriculation exam as an external student on 23 February 1926.2
In March of 1926 he entered the University of Warsaw, where he studied
philosophy and mathematics with Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Stanisław Leśniewski, Jan
Łukasiewicz, Władisław Tatarkiewicz, and Władysław Witwicki.
As a student in the Faculty of Humanities from 1926 to 1930, he received his
Magisterium (M.A. degree) on June 30, 1930 for work on the theory of deduction,
giving three new axioms for the equivalential calculus.3
He then transferred to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, re-
ceiving his Ph.D. on June 30, 1936 eximia cum laude, for work on multi-valued

2 Internetowy Polski Słownik Biograficzny. Thanks to Roman Sznajder for an English translation.
3 “Z badań nad teorja˛ dedukcji” (Investigations into the theory of deduction), Przeglad
˛ Filozoficzny,
35 (1932), 171–193. No English translation has been made.
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 3

propositional calculi.4 He was examined by Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, and Sier-

piński. Both degrees were under the direction of the eminent Polish Logician Jan
Łukasiewicz (1878–1956).5 From 1934 he was assistant and from 1937 senior
assistant to Stanisław Leśniewski (1886–1939) who held the chair of Philosophy
of Mathematics at Warsaw University. At this time the University of Warsaw had
two (full) professors of logic, more than any other school in the world. This close
contact with the two founders of the Warsaw Logic School determined the course
of his research.
In 1939 he received a prize from the Faculty of Sciences at Warsaw University
for his paper Issues about A. Tarski’s weakest basis of the theory of deduction.6 He
passed the exam for his Venia Legendi (Dozent of Logic) in 1939 but war broke
out before it could be officially approved by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and
Public Education (MWRiOP). This paper on Protothetic was to appear in the new
journal Collectanea Logica, but the printing house in Warsaw, Piotr Pyz i S-ka, was
bombed in September 1939 and the plates of the first issue were destroyed. All that
survived were a few offprints which had been sent out for review.7 One went to
Heinrich Scholz in Münster who reviewed it in the Zentralblatt. It is hard to believe,
but another of those offprints, inscribed to his future wife, survives in Sobociński’s
Nachlaß:
P. Ewie Wrześniewskiej od
autora
20
19 32r.
XII

4 “Aksjomatyzacja pewnych wielowartościowych systemów teorji dedukcji,” (Axiomatization of

certain many-valued systems of the calculus of propositions), Roczniki prac Naukowych Zrzeszenia
Asystentów Uniwersytetu Józefa Piłsudskiego w Warszwie, Vol. 1, Wydział matematyczno-
przyrodniczy Nr. 1, Warszawa, 1936, pp. 399–419.
5 Sobociński once remarked to me that Alfred Tarski suggested that he ask Leśniewski to direct his

dissertation. However, he had asked Łukasiewicz to advise him just the day before.
6 Zagadnienia A. Tarskiego o najsłabszej bazie teorii dedukcji [Noted in Krzysztof Tatarkiewicz

(1923–2011), “Profesor Sobociński i kolega Bum” (Professor Sobociński and colleague Boom),
Wiadomości Matematyczne, 34 (1998), 123–146]. Sobociński received the nickname “Boom”
(“Bum” in Polish) when he calmly remarked during a bombardment “What a great boom”
[Świ˛etorzecka, p. 5].
7 “Z badań nad prototetyka”
˛ (An investigation of protothetic), Collectanea Logica 1 (1939), 171–
177. Protothetic is the most basic of Leśniewski’s three logical systems, being the strongest
possible extension of the propositional calculus. The term “pro venia legendi” is Latin for a
“petition for permission to read,” i.e., to lecture. The German term is habilitation. He was examined
by Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, Mazurkiewicz, and after Leśniewski died, by the physicist Czesław
Białobrzeski. For details see the 21 page introduction to Sobociński’s reconstruction (likely from
memory) and translation of the Polish original: “An investigation of protothetic,” Cahiers de
l’Institut d’Êtudes Polonaises en Belgique, no. 5. Polycopié. Brussels 1949, v + 44 pp. The
technical portions of this paper have been printed in English translation in Storrs McCall, Polish
Logic, 1920–1939, but I do not believe that this discussion of the fate of the journal has ever been
reprinted.
4 V. F. Rickey

This shows that Sobociński met his future wife as early as 1932.
Leśniewski, who had been a chain smoker for decades, contracted thyroid cancer,
and died on 13 May 1939 at the age of 53, just a few months before Germany
invaded Poland on September 1. His voluminous papers were entrusted to his most
knowledgeable and loyal student, Sobociński. Although Leśniewski had published
750 pages of his results, his logical systems were little known. Part of the reason,
Sobociński wrote, was that Leśniewski “presented the results of his considerations
in such an exact, formal and at the same time laconic form that it is almost
impossible to understand it without an extensive introduction. Such an extensive
introduction and commentary has been prepared by me, unfortunately however it
has been destroyed during the Warsaw rising in 1944.”8
The earliest description of Sobociński comes from Czesław Lejewski:
Generally speaking my knowledge of Sobociński’s life and editorial activities before 1939
is very very limited. I think I met him no more than about three years earlier, i.e. in 1936,
but I knew him by sight since my first year at the University of Warsaw as an undergraduate
(1931). It was his appearance and a way of dressing that attracted one’s attention. He could
easily be singled out in a crowd of students. He always looked lean and hungry, and had
very pale, almost unhealthy complexion. He used to wear striped trousers, a black jacket,
and a black bowler hat. He used to carry a bulging brief case and an umbrella or a stick.
If he were bodily transferred from Warsaw to the City of London as it was at the times of
Dickens, he would be indistinguishable from a low paid clerk in a bank or an accountant’s
office. [Lejewski9 to Rickey, 25.9.1981]

2 Surviving WW II

Before WW II, Sobociński was a member of the National Radical Camp (ONR =
Obóz Narodowo Radykalny), but he did not play a major role in it. Sobociński wrote
that in
The first year of the Second World War he spent with relatives in Lithuania, and after his
return to Warsaw he took an active part in Polish underground organizations, fighting both
German occupation and communism.10

Świ˛etorzecka provides more information about his activities early in the war:
At the beginning of the war (around 6.09.1939), Sobociński fled from Warsaw and headed to
the estate of W. Tatarkiewicz’s mother-in-law, Ksawera Potworowska, located near Lublin
(Radoryż). There, he met Krystof Tatarkiewicz, who was sixteen at the time. Sobociński

8 From the typescript of a lecture given by Sobociński at the College of Saint Thomas in the Spring

of 1950. Copy in Sobociński’s Nachlaß at Notre Dame.

9 Czesław Lejewski (1913–2001), of whom we will hear more below, studied with Leśniewski

before the war. Sobociński’s attire, adding only a white shirt and black bow tie, is confirmed by
Tatarkiewicz, “Bum”, p. 128.
10 This third person undated autobiographical note in his Nachlaß bears Sobociński’s typed

signature.
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 5

planned to reach the estate of the Skirmunt family11 (at the time in Poland, now Belarus),
but he was stopped (by a “gang of peasants”— as he described the attackers) and taken to
a town nearby (Motol).12 Sobociński kept his acquaintance with the Skirmunts secret (the
whole family was murdered in 1939 by the Bolsheviks); in this way, he saved his life and
was able to leave Motol. He traveled to Vilnius first (at the time under Lithuanian). There
he gave a lecture entitled “O prototetyce prof. Leśniewskiego” (“On Professor Leśniewski’s
Protothetics”) at a meeting of the Vilnius Philosophical Society (18.10.1939). He went to the
estate belonging to his maternal relative, Karol Parczewski (1875–1957), where he stayed
from December 1939 to mid-1941 (Stończe, Lithuania, at that time was not occupied by the
Soviets). In 1941, he returned to Warsaw.13

During the war (precisely when is uncertain), Łukasiewicz continued the seminar
he began in 1936 on Aristotle’s logic. The participants included Henry Hiż, Jan
Salamucha, Jerzy Słupecki, and Bolesław Sobociński.14 In late 1943, Łukasiewicz
withdrew from this secret teaching (as he feared for his life) and then, on July
17, 1944, departed Warsaw for Münster, arriving the next day.15 Sobociński took
over. Krzysztof Tatarkiewicz, who attended these lectures, described Sobociński’s
teaching style:
They were completely different than lectures by J. Łukasiewicz — perfect in terms of
teaching. My notes from his lectures resembled the pages of Principia Mathematica by B.
Russell and A. N. Whitehead, but they contained more than theses and their purely formal
proofs; during the lecture there were also comments: both intuitive (explaining what these
patterns really mean), as well as metalogical, methodological or philosophical.16

When Sobociński returned to Warsaw he became much more involved in the

underground resistance. The ONR changed names several times and Sobociński’s
involvement increased. Towards the end of the war, using the nom de guerre Rawicz,

11 This could be Raman Skirmunt (1868–1939), but his Wikipedia page indicates that “In 1939,
upon annexation of West Belarus by the USSR, Raman Skirmunt was killed by some local people.”
He was born in the village Parechcha near Pinsk, where the Parecca manor, Raman Skirmunt’s
estate, is.
12 A footnote, with references, indicates that this information is from a letter of Sobociński to

Bocheński.
13 More information about the whereabouts of Sobociński during this period is in Krzysztof

Tatarkiewicz (1923–2011), “Logik i Polityk (Bolesław Sobociński),” Matematycy Polskiego

Pochodzenia na Obczyźnie, 1998, pp. 168–169.
14 Jacek Jadacki, Polish Analytical Philosophy (2009), p. 271.
15 Schmidt am Busch and Wehmeier, “On the relations between Heinrich Scholz and Jan

Łukasiewicz,” History and Philosophy of Logic, 28 (February 2007), 67–81, p. 78. See also, V.
Frederick Rickey, “Polish logic from Warsaw to Dublin: The life and work of Jan Łukasiewicz,”
CSHPM Proceedings, volume 24 (2001), 93–109.
16 Tatarkiewicz, “Bum,” 1998. In the autobiographical note at the beginning of this paper, Sobo-

ciński confirms that during the war he “conducted courses in philosophy, logic and foundations of
mathematics in the underground Warsaw University.” In a letter to Henry Hiż dated 16 September
1981, I wrote: “Mrs. Sobociński said that he did teach in the underground university. This is also
on his vita. Was the organization big enough and diverse enough so that people did not know
what others were doing? I’m asking as I am puzzled by your remark that Sobociński wasn’t in the
underground university.”
6 V. F. Rickey

Sobociński was head of the National Political Department (IV A) in the Central
Intelligence Service of the National Armed Forces (NSZ), which was comprised of
some 75,000 combatants.
Leopold Okulicki, Commander in Chief of the Armia Krajowa was directed to
accept a Soviet invitation to negotiations concerning Poland’s future. He went to
those talks on March 27, 1945 fully aware that he might be walking into a trap. And
he was right. Since Sobociński held a high position in the NSZ he was included
in the “invitees.” He was late for the meeting and when he got close, he noticed a
number of Soviet trucks nearby. Suspicious of the Soviets, he turned back. Thus the
Trial of the Sixteen was not the Trial of the Seventeen.
Because of his resistance to both the Soviets and the Nazis, Sobociński was
condemned to death in absentia nine times. So it was time to leave Poland.
“In September 1946, he secretly left Poland, together with Ewa Wrześniewska.
They traveled to Regensburg via Katowice and they eventually married in Germany”
[Świ˛etorzecka, p. 601]. On this trip they would have crossed Czechoslovakia.17 A
footnote by Świ˛etorzecka indicates that “At Łukasiewicz’s request, their travel was
facilitated by Zbigniew Jordan (1911–1977).”18
While teaching modal logic in the Fall of 1971, one student asked for an example
of an impossible proposition. Sobociński responded that to walk 50 km in one night
would be impossible. Then he paused and said that he had done that, but to walk
100 km in one night would be impossible. After Sobociński’s death, his wife told
me that on their way out of Poland she was very nervous as he kept stopping in
the small towns to read the inscriptions on the monuments. Part of the journey was
by train and, being accustomed to traveling with a fake passport, he calmly put his
briefcase on his lap and started writing. She asked what he was doing and his answer
was telling: Logic.

3 Brussels

In October 1945, Łukasiewicz secured a temporary position to lecture on logic at

the provisionally founded Polish Scientific Institute. It is not clear how he obtained
this position or how he got to Brussels, but the individual in the background was,

17 Thomas A. Sudkamp, Sobociński’s last Ph.D. student (1978) wrote “One of my big regrets is
that I didn’t have a chance to learn more of his personal life. He was very reluctant to discuss it.
Only one or two times did I get him to open up about his adventures during world war II, hiding
out in Checkoslovakia (sp?).” [Sudkamp to Rickey, September 28, 1981]
18 Sayre notes, note 13, p. 337, that “According to rumors circulated by subsequent students at ND

(my source here is Charles Quinn), Sobocinski brought valuable papers with him in a briefcase
acquired from an SS officer he had killed during clandestine operations. Imagine how logic by
day might have mixed with homicide by night.” I have never heard this rumor and find it hard to
believe. Why would he be carrying secret papers while escaping? The comment about “logic by
day” is Sayre’s imaginative hyperbole.
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 7

possibly, Chaïm Perelman (1912–1984), a Polish Jew whose family had moved to
Brussels when he was 12, who went to Warsaw in 1937 where he studied for the
year with Łukasiewicz, who was Rector at the time, and Kotarbiński. He received
his Ph.D. from Kotarbiński, writing on Frege’s metaphysics. Possibly Robert Feys
was also involved in getting Łukasiewicz to Brussels.19 This is also likely how
Sobociński got to Brussels, arriving a year after Łukasiewicz and probably with
help from him. In the autumn of 1946, Łukasiewicz secured a position at the Irish
Royal Academy in Dublin, where he lived the remainder of his life.20
Sobociński was a research member of the Polish Scientific Institute in Belgium
(L’Institut d’Études Polonaises in Belgium), 1946–1949.21
While in Brussels, Sobociński again started to reconstruct Leśniewski’s systems
from memory. This is clear from several notebooks that survive in his Nachlaß
which contain a careful development of the elementary portions of Leśniewski’s
Ontology, the first of which is dated “Bruksella, 5.II.1947.” There is a notebook
containing deductions in Mereology as well as a notebook that treats three topics:
Some examples of advanced definitions in Ontology, a section on Carnap’s Abriss
der Logistik (1929), and deductions dealing with Leśniewski’s analysis of the
Russell antinomy. The last page is dated Bruksella, 10.IX.1948. The deductions
here follow the early deductions in Sobociński’s paper “L’Analyse de l’antinomie
Russellienne par Leśniewski,” the first part of which was submitted on 15 December
1948.22
While in Belgium Sobociński gave lectures that Henry Hiż attended. When
Sobociński visited Łukasiewicz in Dublin in 1947 he mentioned a thesis, Cδδ0δp,
which was already known to Leśniewski as a curiosity (here δ is a variable functor).
This generated papers by Łukasiewicz and “Mr. C. A. Meredith who has attended
my lectures on Mathematical Logic at the Royal Irish Academy since 1946.”23

19 Feys (1889–1961) was a Belgian logician who worked on modal logic. He was one of the
founders of the journal Logique et Analyse. Sobociński cites a book about logical symbolism,
Logistiek, geformaliseerde logica (1944), by Robert Feys in his 1949 republication of “An
investigation of Protothetic,” Whether he knew him before he arrived in Belgium is unknown. See
Louis De Raeymaeker, “In memoriam le chanoine Robert Feys,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain,
vol. 59, no. 62 (1961), pp. 371–374. Later he was invited to be a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame,
but I don’t believe this came to fruition.
20 See Sobociński, “In memoriam Jan Łukasiewicz (1784–1956)” Philosophical Studies, VI,

December 1956, 3–49, Maynooth Ireland, 1956.

21 “Boleslaw Sobocinski,” The Polish Review, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (1982), pp. 183–225.
22 In Sobociński’s Nachlass there are deductions, but no text, and there are differences in the

deductions, so this will require further study. The paper appeared in the first two volumes (1949–
1950) of the Italian journal Methodos. The reason the paper appeared in this new journal was that
Bocheński was the Editor of the Logical Section.
There is an English translation by Robert E. Clay, entitled “Leśniewski’s analysis of Russell’s
paradox,” in Leśniewski’s Systems: Ontology and Mereology (1984).
23 Łukasiewicz “On variable functors of propositional arguments,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish

Academy,’ vol. 54, section A, no. 2 (January 1951), pp. 24–35. Reprinted in Jan Łukasiewicz:
Selected Works, 1970.
8 V. F. Rickey

From the passports, note that the Sobocińskis visited Bocheński in Fribourg. In
conformity with how Lejewski described Sobociński earlier, his face is rather
thin. When I met Andrzej Mostowski in the summer of 1966 at the Séminaire de
Mathématiques Supérieures at the Université de Montréal, he remarked “I hear that
Sobociński is growing stout.” He also remarked that after he escaped being sent
to a camp after the Warsaw Uprising, he heard a voice call out “Hello Professor
Mostowski.” It was Sobociński. They talked for some time and then each went on
his way.
On 21 April 1949, E. W. Beth sent Sobociński a confidential circular (not a
personal letter) on North Holland Publishing Company stationary inviting him to
contribute a monograph to the Studies in Logic series which was just beginning. This
project was conceived at the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy, which was
held in Amsterdam, 11–18 August 1948. The monographs were to be in English,
French, or German and to consist of 50 to 75 pages. A circular which was distributed
later lists Sobociński as the author of a monograph on the Logic of Propositions. A
letter from Beth to Sobociński dated 1 July 1949 indicates that Sobociński replied
on 18 May, offering to write a book on Méréologie. On 22 September 1949, M. D.
Frank, the Managing Director of the series, wrote Sobociński asking “if you really
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 9

are moving to America,” for then royalties would need to be paid in “American
currency.” The next letter, dated 13 January 1950, and addressed to Sobociński at
the College of St. Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, contained a contract for Sobociński
to sign. There are notes on propositional calculi in his Nachlaß which Sobociński
prepared for this work. For several years while at Notre Dame, Sobociński listed
these books as “to appear,” but they never did.

4 College of Saint Thomas

The September 23, 1949 issue of The Aquin, a publication of the College of Saint
Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, announced that eighteen individuals had joined
the faculty.24 Here are the first two on the list:
The philosophy department has received several outstanding men. Dr. Boleslaw Sobocinski,
who will teach logic, is a renowned European scholar. A graduate of the University of
Warsaw, Dr. Sobocinski was teaching at the University of Lodz up until the time he fled
from Poland to escape possible imprisonment because of his activity against Communism.
Dr. Marian W. Heintzman [sic] has also arrived from Poland and will teach philosophy
at the College. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Cracow in Poland. Dr.
Heitzman has held many responsible diplomatic positions and has traveled extensively in
Russia.

This announcement was premature, because the Sobocińskis had not yet ar-
rived.25 The Aquin of January 13, 1950 reported that he “arrived last week to prepare
for his duties . . . He will begin teaching next semester.” There is a picture of Mr. and
Mrs. Sobociński with Dr. Heitzman (whose quality is too poor to reproduce here).
Reportedly, Heitzman and Bocheński recommended Sobociński for the position, but
documentation is lacking.26 That he taught at the University of Łódź was probably
an embellishment to get the job; he was offered a professorship there but never
showed up [Świ˛etorzecka, p. 3].
One interesting thing about the photo is that Sobociński is holding a short
cigarette holder. It was his custom to break a Camel cigarette in half and smoke one
half at a time. He was a chain smoker who would smoke in classes and seminars.27

24 Much of the information in this section comes from the Special Collections Department at the
University of St. Thomas, thanks to University Archivist, Ann M. Kenne.
25 Lejewski notes in “Ś. P. Bolesław Sobociński,” Znak (1984), No. 351–352, pp. 401 that the

Sobocińskis left Belgium for the USA in December 1949.

26 Heitzman, a historian of Philosophy in Kraków, probably came to know Sobociński

through philosophical circles. See the unsigned “In memoriam: Marian Heitzman 20.X.1899 –
18.XI.1964,” The Polish Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1965), pp. 99–100.
27 My memory does not entirely agree with what Sayre writes (p. 89): “Another remarkable fact

about Sobociński is that he smoked incessantly. His smoking routine was intriguing. He would take
a cigarette from his box, break it in half, somehow manage to light one half from the stub still in
the holder, and smoke it down to the hilt until it was time to light the other half. About the only
time you could count on Sobo’s not smoking was when he was expounding on logic in public.”
10 V. F. Rickey

From the “Faculty Record,” which is dated February 14, 1950, we learn that
Sobociński was 47 years old, Catholic, married, “Stateless,” and had traveled in
Poland, Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Čzechoslovakia, Germany, Belgium, Ireland,
France, Switzerland, and Holland. He had a reading and speaking knowledge of
Polish, Russian, and French, but only a reading knowledge of German. Latin was not
mentioned; perhaps it was expected at the time that every philosopher knew Latin.
Sobociński, as a member of the Cracow Circle, certainly read Latin, an assumption
confirmed by the course he taught at St. Thomas on Thomism. The Faculty Record
indicates that Sobociński was appointed as a “Lecturer of Philosophy” at St. Thomas
in September 1949 for ten months for a salary of $3500.
In the “Evidences of Scholarship” portion of the Faculty Record, eight publica-
tions are listed, all but two of which survive in Sobociński’s Nachlaß. But the most
interesting thing is the note which follows:
Besides the above mentioned, up to 100 small notes and reviews published mainly
in “Przeglad Filozoficzny” / Philosophical Review, Warsaw /, “Organon” / Warsaw /,
“Przeglad Katolicki” / Catholic Review, Warsaw /, Journal of Symbolic Logic / Princeton /.

It is easy to identify the reviews in the JSL, but it would be difficult to identify the
others as the publications are difficult to obtain and the reviews may not be signed.
Nonetheless, the claim of writing this many reviews is quite plausible as he was
the Managing Editor of Przeglad ˛ Filozoficzny from 1931 to 1939. “The Catholic
Review” began publication in Warsaw in 1863, but there were interruptions for both
World Wars (1915–1922 and 1938–1983).
Sobociński listed membership in three professional organizations:
• Warsaw Philosophical Society, admitted 1931. He was a member of the Executive
Board. The word “admitted” is on the Faculty Record.
• Polish Logical Society, admitted 1935. He was a member of the Executive
Board.28
• Polish Mathematical Society, admitted 1937.
During the one semester that Sobociński taught at St. Thomas, he did not publish
any papers. But one paper seems to have begun there. It is a translation from the
1934 Polish original of a paper by Jan Salamucha (1903–1944) which uses first-
order logic to reveal the tacit assumptions and analyze the defects in St. Thomas’s
proof ex motu of the existence of God. The translators are Tadeusz Gierymski and
Marian Heitzman of the College of St. Thomas.29 The translation is preceded by

28 The Polish Logical Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Logiczne) was founded in 1936 on the
initiative of Łukasiewicz, who became the first president of the Society. It is curious that Sobociński
claimed to be “admitted” already in 1935. The board of the society consisted of Jan Łukasiewicz,
Adolf Lindenbaum, Andrzej Mostowski, Bolesław Sobociński, and Alfred Tarski. The Society
started to publish the ill-fated journal Collectanea Logica.
29 Tadeusz Gierymski served as Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Saint

Thomas from 1954 to 1989, when he retired. Marian Heitzman (1899–1964) is not listed among
the retired faculty. From 1928 he taught at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. During the
war he was head of the Political Department of the Ministry of National Defense in London,
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 11

an interesting biographical note about Fr. Salamucha by Sobociński who knew him
from their interactions in the Cracow Circle. By the time this was published in The
New Scholasticism in 1958, Sobociński was at Notre Dame.
Sobociński was actively involved in the Philosophy Department giving lectures
on Leśniewski’s philosophy of logic. There is a 29 page typescript of two talks on
Leśniewski’s foundations of mathematics, that give a nice introductory survey of
Leśniewski’s Protothetic, Ontology, and Mereology. There is also a “Philosophy
Seminar,” consisting of three lectures, 29 pages of typescript. The first of these is
dated March 10, 1950. These lectures deal with the history of logic and display
considerable erudition. It contains a very interesting discussion of the differences
between Aristotelian logic, the logic of the Stoics, and traditional logic. Sobociński’s
knowledge of the history of logic displayed here is impressive. These manuscripts
are nicely written; it is likely that he had help with his English from Heitzman.
Sobociński’s command of English was not very strong when he was at St.
Thomas. As an example, in a letter to “Very Reverend Father,” Prof. Dr. Robert
Feys he asked about publishing a short “and not specially technical” paper in the
Revue Philosophique de Louvain:
I would like to explain a problem concerning the bi-valued logic which, it seems to me, was
not discussed in the literature. I observed it looking over some papers from modal logic and
many-valued systems. I have not this paper written, but I can done it in very short time, if
the answer will be positive.

Sobociński’s insistance on a rigorous high level approach to teaching Thomism,

and his difficulties with English led to his downfall: “The administration was not
too thrilled with his scholarship (he lectured on Thomism from the original texts
and not on the texts of later commentators) and finally his lectures were suspended
and he was removed from the college after one semester.” The level of scholarship
was simply too high for the undergraduates at St. Thomas.

5 Institute for Applied Logic

From 1951 to 1956 Sobociński served as director of research at the Institute

of Applied Logic which was located in the Oppenheim Building in Saint Paul,
Minnesota. John Goodell was the Director of the Institute. Together they founded
the The Journal of Computing Systems, which appeared in June 1952.
The authors who published in this short-lived journal (only one volume,
four numbers, was published) reveal some of Sobociński’s connections: Jan
Łukasiewicz, Alan Rose, Carew A. Meredith, A. N. Prior, Alan Ross Anderson, and
Desmond Paul Henry.

military attache in the USSR, and author of the first report on the Katyń massacre. After the war
he emigrated to Canada where he taught at McGill University in Montreal before coming to the
College of St. Thomas.
12 V. F. Rickey

Of the 24 papers published in The Journal of Computing Systems, four were

by Sobociński. One of these, “On a universal decision element,” appears to break
new research ground for Sobociński, but on closer examination, it too deals with
propositional logic. It investigates logic gates and the simplest ways to construct
them from given gates. The last, “Axiomatization of the conjunctive-negative
calculus of propositions,” was a reconstruction from memory of a paper originally
“published” in the ill-fated journal Collectana Logica in 1939.
Due to financial difficulties the Institute of Applied Logic was forced to close
in 1956, leaving Sobociński unemployed. He contacted several universities and
industries, sending his three-page “Life Abstract.” From this document we learn
that his height was five feet nine inches and his weight was 170 pounds. He also
described his work at the Institute of Applied Logic:
Research in Logics and Mathematics as applied to the Computer Systems; propositional
calculus, Boolean algebra and algebra of logics. Consulting on application of Logical
methods to the speeding of the arithmetical operations. Methods to the automatic program-
theory and techniques of handling information, adaption of the theory of quantifiers,
protothetic and the theory of recursive functions.

From correspondence in his Nachlaß it is clear that his applications were

supported by Carnap, Church, Kleene, and Quine. Everyone he contacted reported
that they had no openings or that he was overqualified for their positions. There was
one exception, a job offer at General Mills, which he did not accept. On August 15,
1956, a friend wrote that “you have chosen well” to accept the offer at Notre Dame.
He did obtain some additional employment in St. Paul: “I collaborated a
long time with Minnesota Electronics Corporation, now defunct, concerning an
application of symbolic logic to the theory of electronic computers. In 1956 I
received a consultantship contract from Remington Rand Univac Corp., St Paul
Minn.”

6 I. M. Bocheński

In 1952, Father Theodore Martin Hesburgh (1917–2015) was appointed the fifteenth
president of the University of Notre Dame. One of his goals was to upgrade the
quality of the university by attracting top scholars and so, in 1953, “With visions
of Notre Dame becoming the ‘Catholic Princeton’ dancing in his head, Father
Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, establishes the Distinguished Professors Program and
begins barnstorming Europe to recruit anchoring talent.” On one of these tours he
was specifically looking for philosophers.30 He visited Salamanca, Paris, Munich,

30 Hesburgh realized that the Mathematics Department did not need upgrading as it was headed
by Arnold Ross, who had succeeded Karl Menger [Kenneth M. Sayre, Adventures in Philosophy
at Notre Dame (2014), p. 57. This book has proved invaluable in preparing this paper but I have
not cited it each time I used it.] Menger was a professor at Notre Dame from 1937 to 1946; he
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 13

Louvain—where he recruited Ernan McMullin, a young priest with a background

in physics—and then headed for Fribourg to meet Bocheński, the best Catholic
philosopher in Europe [Sayre 2014, p. 58].
In 1934, Bocheński received his doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical
University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, also known as the Angelicum.
Naturally it was run by the Dominicans, but is not to be confused with the Gregorian
which is also in Rome and was run by the Jesuits. From 1934 to 1940 he taught logic
there and then, from 1945 to 1972, he was a professor at the University of Fribourg
in Switzerland.31
Around 1930, Bocheński became interested in mathematical logic. The Principia
Mathematica was one of the most important books for him, but he also read work
by Kazimierz Ajdukiewics, Alonzo Church, and Haskell Curry.32
When Hesburgh visited Bocheński he was struck by the fact that his office was
crammed with books from floor to ceiling and in a variety of languages, including
fifteen that he had written. When Hesburgh asked what he was working on he
responded that he was working on a history of logic. When asked who might
translate it into English, he immediately named a fellow Dominican, Father Ivo
Thomas. This work, A History of Formal Logic, was indeed translated by Thomas
and published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 1961 [Sayre 2014, p. 62].
It was the Cracow Circle [Koło Kracowskie] that tied Bocheński and Sobociński
together intellectually. It was created to show that modern logic was needed to
explain the arguments of Thomas of Aquinas, who used only syllogistic logic.
Its official origin can be traced to August 26, 1936 at a special meeting of the
Third Philosophical Congress in Cracow, although there were earlier discussions
of this goal.33 It was founded at the instigation of Łukasiewicz, and its most

then moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Ross was chair of the mathematics
department from 1946 until he moved to The Ohio State University in 1963.
31 During the war Bocheński served as a chaplain for the Polish army. I know little about his

wartime activity other than comments in Sayre. He used various pseudonyms including Emil
Majerski, Bogusław Prawdota, P. Banks, and K. Fred. I do not know if these were related to his
wartime activity [Sayre 2014, p. 334].
32 Woleński, “Józef M. Bocheński and the Cracow Circle,” Studies in East European Thought,

Vol. 65, No. 1/2 (September 2013), pp. 5–15, p. 6. Curry gave a series of five lectures at Notre
Dame, April 12–15, 1948 which are published as A Theory of Formal Deducibility (1960), the
sixth volume of the Notre Dame Mathematical Lectures series. At the time Menger was department
head. I suspect that they had met in Europe when Curry was working on his 1930 Ph.D. under the
direction of Hilbert.
33 For its history see Roman Murawski, “Cracow Circle and Its Philosophy of Logic and

Mathematics,” Axiomathes, September 2015, Vol. 25, Issue 3, pp. 359–376; Jan Woleński, “Józef
M. Bocheński and the Cracow Circle,” and Bocheński,“The Cracow Circle,” pp. 9–18 in K.
Szaniawski (ed) The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, 1989.
14 V. F. Rickey

prominent members were Bocheński (1902–1995), Jan Salamucha (1903–1944),34

Jan Franciszek Drewnowski (1896–1978),35 and Sobociński.
Bocheński came to Notre Dame as a visitor in the fall of 1955, McMullin having
joined the philosophy faculty a year earlier:
Notre Dame, Ind., Aug. 25 — Rev. I. M. Bochenski, O.P., an eminent mathematical logician
who has been teaching at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, will be a visiting
professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame during the 1955–56 school year,
it was announced here today by Rev. Philip S. Moore, C.S.C., vice president for academic
affairs.
Father Bochenski is the author of Problemgeschichte and is widely known for his writing
in his field. He is one of several internationally recognized scholars being added to the Notre
Dame faculty under the University’s Distinguished Professors Program.
Courses to be conducted by Father Bochenski include “History of Logical Problems”
and “Contemporary Logic.” During the first semester beginning in September he will also
deliver a series of general lectures on Existentialism. He will give another lecture series on
Dialectical and Historical Materialism during the second semester. [Press release, August
26, 1955.]

During the 1955–1956 academic year the Rev. I. M. Bocheński, O.P., was a
visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre
Dame.36 He had been invited to organize a logic program at the university, as
we shall see below. For his contributions he received an honorary degree from the
university on June 5, 1966.37 Father Bocheński wrote about Sobociński:
I come now to another logician whom I knew intimately, Sobociński. An assistant of
Leśniewski, he was said to be the only man in the world who really knew everything about
his master’s logic — the search for the shortest axioms and the like — he left a considerable
number of results which would surely merit republication.
Let me tell something about him which happened in South Bend in 1956. Sitting at
the fireside in his villa, he was bitterly complaining of “all the nonsense which is written
in logical books”. “What books?”, I asked. “Well, your own books for instance”. You can

34 Jan Salamucha (1903–1944) studied philosophy, mathematics, and logic at the University of
Warsaw where he attended the lectures by Łukasiewicz, Leśniewski, Kotarbiński, Władysław
Tatarkiewicz, and Stefan Mazurkiewicz.
35 Between 1921 and 1927, Drewnowski studied philosophy, mathematics, and logic at the

University of Warsaw under the supervision of Stanisław Leśniewski, Jan Łukasiewicz and
Tadeusz Kotarbiński. In 1927, he obtained his doctor’s degree under Kotarbiński’s supervision
with a dissertation dealing with Bolzano’s logic. Drewnowski is also important as he headed the
institute in Belgium where Sobociński was unhappily employed before he came to the USA.
36 For biographical information see Guido Küng, “In Memoriam: Joseph (Innocent) M. Bochenski,

O.P. 1902–1995,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Sep., 1995), pp. 217–218.
37 Department of Information Services Records (DIS), University of Notre Dame Archives

(UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556. File “UDIS 129/03 Subject: Bochenski, Reverend I.M. Joseph
M., OP — Honorary Degree Recipient 1902–.” Kenneth Sayre writes that “The commendation
accompanying the presentation of the honorary degree was written by Fr. McMullin, and contained
lighthearted references to Bochenski’s earlier stay at ND. Unaccustomed to levity on such
portentous occasions, Bochenski accepted the certificate with visible displeasure. This reinforced
Fr. Ernan’s unabashed memory of Bochenski as a crotchety old man ‘with little feel for normal
human relations’. ”
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 15

imagine that I asked him to explain. “Of course”, he said, “you do assert, like most of the
crowd, formulae with free variables, which is nonsense”. This gives an idea of how true he
was to the tradition of rigour of his masters in Warsaw.
Sobociński was also a completely unpractical and most “scholarly” person. During the
interview which preceded his nomination in Notre Dame, we had quite a lot of trouble
understanding what he meant by saying “Son loves Mary”. We asked in vain “whose son?”.
It appeared finally that not a son, but John was meant. When appointed he asked that the
expenses for the transportation of his wife and of his cat be paid. And so on. Yet, once
in the chair, he proved to be an excellent, brilliant teacher. It is true that he wrote on the
blackboard practically all that he said.38

From these comments we learn that Bocheński was present when Sobociński
was interviewed for a position at Notre Dame in the Spring of 1956. They also
reveal problems with Sobociński’s command of English, something that concerned
those who were hiring a teacher. There were also concerns about rumors about
Sobociński’s anti-Semitism.39 Together these doubtless account for his being hired
as a research associate rather than at one of the professorial ranks. That he was hired
at all indicates the influence that Father Bocheński had and the confidence that he
had in Sobociński’s expertise as a logician and respect for what he had published
already. This confidence benefited the university.
In the 1950’s, on the recommendation of Prof. I. M. Bocheński, the University of Notre
Dame inaugurated a research program in logic, and invited [Father Ivo] Thomas to
become a visiting professor, from 1958–1960. He collaborated with Prof. B. Sobociński
in establishing Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic and was a regular participant in
his seminars. From 1959–1963 at Notre Dame and then from 1964–1974, at Ohio State
University, Columbus, he taught in the summer school program for teachers and gifted
students in mathematics, funded by the National Science Foundation. In 1963, he joined the
faculty of the General Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame, becoming professor in
1970 and director of the Collegiate Seminar in 1973.40

7 Ernan McMullin

Ernan McMullin (1924–2011) has been mentioned several times before in passing.
As a long time member of the governing board for the journal, he played the
important role of encouraging Sobociński in this work. McMullin was born October
13, 1924 in Ballybofey, Donegal, Ireland. As a high school student he learned

38 Józef M. Bocheński, “Morals of thought and speech — reminiscences,” pp. 1–8 in Philosophical

Logic in Poland, edited by Jan Woleński, 1994.

39 When preparing the obituary note “Bolesław Sobociński 1906–1980,” Jane Dunkle, the long-
time mathematics department secretary who had moved with O. Timothy O’Meara (1928–2018)
to the Office of the Provost, gave me access to Sobociński’s personnel file. She asked that I treat
that information with care as it contained rumored information about Sobociński’s anti-Semitism.
These records in the University Archives will not be available for 72 years after the date of their
creation.
40 Otto Bird, “In Memoriam Ivo Thomas (1912–1976),” NDJFL, Vol. 18, April 1977, 193–194.
16 V. F. Rickey

Gaelic. He attended Maynooth College, the National University of Ireland, earning

a B.Sc. in Physics in 1954 and a B.D. in Theology in 1948. In 1949 he was ordained
a Roman Catholic priest. He then received a fellowship in theoretical physics at
the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, 1949–1950. He was the only person
at the Institute without an advanced degree. He worked under the 1933 Nobel
laureate Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) and Lajos Jánossy (1912–1978).41 Then
he studied philosophy at the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie of the University of
Louvain (Leuven) in Belgium, 1950–1954, taking the baccalaureat, licence, and
doctoral degrees in philosophy, summa cum laude. The topic of his 1954 doctoral
dissertation was The Principle of Uncertainty. A preliminary critical study of the
origin, meanings, and consequences of uncertainty.42
In 1954 McMullin joined the Notre Dame faculty as an instructor in philosophy,
with joint duties in physics. He had a single office with the physicists, rather than an
office with five philosophers. He taught philosophy of science in John FitzGerald’s
philosophy sequence for physics majors, a course that was well received.43 John
Derwent took this course the first time McMullin taught it and reports that “it was by
a wide margin the best course I had from the College of Arts and Letters” [email of
September 20, 2018]. McMullin’s reception by the philosophers did not go so well.
As was customary at the time, he was appointed without consulting the department.
While still at Louvain, he wrote a scathing review of Philosophical Physics
(1950) by Vincent Smith, one of his new colleagues in philosophy.44 The textbook
for the logic course that McMullin was asked to teach was Logic: The Art of Defining
and Reasoning (1952, 1963) by John Oesterle who joined the department in
1954.45 McMullin could only tolerate the book for a few days so he switched to
Copi’s Introduction to Logic. Such things made McMullin persona non grata in the
department.
In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed Hesburgh to the National Science
Board and he was instrumental in the creation of postdoctoral grants in the
philosophy of science. He recommended that McMullin apply. He did and this
allowed him to spend three years at Yale. Hesburgh then asked McMullin to return
to Notre Dame as chair of the Philosophy Department. Aware of his reputation in

41 For background, see “Eamon de Valera, Erwin Schrodinger, and The Dublin lnstitute for
Advanced Studies,” Journal of Chemical Education, 1983, 60 (3), p. 199.
42 Notre Dame Archives, CEMM 16/13. McMullin’s Dissertation.
43 Sayre 2014, p. 66.
44 I have examined the book. I did force my way through the chapter on “Mathematics and the

Infinite,” which begins with an idiosyncratic presentation of Cantor’s set theory, but the purpose of
doing that is to put his “ideas under the lens of realistic philosophy” [p. 299]. Smith’s foreordained
conclusion, based on ancient ideas of Aristotle and medieval ideas of Aquinas, is that infinite sets
do not exist.
45 This book was specially designed for teaching syllogistic logic in Catholic colleges. It was

cunningly designed with tear out work sheets. Since it could not be resold, Oesterle earned enough
royalties to endow a chair.
Professor Bolesław Sobociński and Logic at Notre Dame 17

the department he sensibly declined. But a formal offer was soon to arrive and he
returned to Notre Dame in the fall of 1960, to remain for the rest of his career.
He spent the 1964–1965 academic year at the University of Minnesota where he
was well liked:
In the course of his relatively short stay here, Father Ernan’s wit and jovial disposition have
become his most well known trademark. And not all of his accomplishments lie in the realm
of scholarship. His forte is the harmonica, and he has a fine repertoire of Irish and American
songs and ballads, as well befiits a son on County Donegal, “the most sung about place in
all of Erie.”46

Years later, when McMullin was famous as a philosopher of science his col-
league, Ralph McInerny, described him in The Philosophy Newsletter of December
1978 as follows: “the green tornado, made his ferocious energy felt here and there
about the galaxy, touching down, among other places at . . . ”47

8 Sobociński Comes to Notre Dame

On June 7, 1956, Sobociński wrote to Fr. Herman Reith, head of the Philosophy
Department: “I received this morning a letter from Father P. J. Moore offering me
the position of Research Associate in your Department.”
On June 12, 1956, Fr. Reith wrote to Sobociński that he was to teach basic
symbolic logic, Phil 111, to students with no previous knowledge of logic. Much
more important was the announcement that there was to be a committee with two
members from mathematics and two from philosophy “to formulate a program in
symbolic and mathematical logic.” “The idea is that we want to inauguarate a very
strong center of symbolic logic here at Notre Dame.”48
At a faculty meeting of the Department of Philosophy on October 26, 1956,
department chair “Father Reith Wilcomed [sic] Father Lu and Mr. Sobocinski
into the department.” At this meeting Father Reith suggested that the faculty
“would be delighted to have Mr. Sobocinski lead a discussion on Isomorphism and
Analogy.” This suggestion was realized on February 20, when Sobociński led an
“intra-departmental discussion” on “The logical notion of the isomorphism and its
application to the notion of analogy.” Two weeks later, McMullin gave an intra-
departmental discussion on “Is modern logic relevant to our teaching?”

46 Notre Dame Archives, CEMM 102 Articles [of McMullin] 1964–66.

47 There was levity in the Mathematics Department also. The minutes of a faculty meeting on
December 11, 1974, which were likely written by Derwent, noted “Several faculty members
have made trips to conferences or to deliver lectures. In particular, four attended the International
Congress in Vancouver in August, but failed to win any Fields medals.”
48 When I saw this letter on 10 September 1981 it was in the Philosophy Department files. The

above is the only part of the letter that I recorded. Due to regulations of the Notre Dame Archives,
this letter is no longer accessible.
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