Publication Details

Abstract

This study is devoted to Igor Hrušovský on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Leibniz's attempts are described to create a new relational logic which should provide a method of thinking, investigate foundations of sciences in their encyclopedical unity. Leibniz calls this, so broadly drafted logic general science. If this general science is to serve as a basis for the exactness of the other sciences (including mathematics) it must be exact itself, i. e., must be constructed as a calculus. In order to become a calculus, logic (general science) must not be constructed by means of usual language but by means of an artificial one. Leibniz investigates1 the structure of this language in an universal characterization. In order to create an adequate characterization, a thorough analysis of the whole of knowledge must be carried out, i. e. an analysis of all sciences, which would lead on to the fundamental notions and theorems; from them, as from a principle, by means of combinatorial analysis (synthesis) an exact form of sciences can be obtained. Possibility of reason, and hence, the field of logic, are not exhausted by analysing the principles of the encyclopedical unity of sciences. Logic must take into account a possible transformation of the structure of sciences (due, for instance, to its being obliged to investigate a world that is different from ours — as is literally mentioned by Leibniz — or to our presupposing such a development of sciences which interfere with their very nature). That is why logic must apprehend all possible structures of sciences and hence to express what is thinkable. Logic as a science of what is thinkable is, in Leibniz type, an investigation into the properties of possible worlds; in our type, it is simply a science on principles of science as such,, laden with a certain relativism. These two types, though very disparate ideologically, are very related syntactically.