Talk:Jan Łukasiewicz

Spelling
I am concerned that we have a spelling conflict over one of the names in the Warsaw School. (See the "studied with" sentence near head of Alfred Tarski. My Source (I can look it up and provide if you like) has Leśniewski. How confident are you in your spelling? Thanks, vanden 07:07, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment about the spelling of his colleague's name Leśniewski. I have little confidence in the accuracy of my spelling, I am sure yours has a better chance of being right. I changed the page to reflect it, and with (I hope) your agreement copied your message & my reply into the article's talk page. EdH 03:04, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(the above copied from the Users' talk pages)

Stacks
On the this page it says "Łukasiewicz's Polish notation of 1920 was at the root of the idea of the recursive stack a last-in, first-out computer memory store invented by Charles Hamblin[1] of the New South Wales University of Technology (NSWUT), and first implemented in 1957."

The external reference about Hamblin says "Hamblin's proposal for Reverse Polish Notation is contained in the following papers." .... "C. L. Hamblin [1957]: "Computer Languages." The Australian Journal of Science, 20: 135-139. Reprinted in The Australian Computer Journal, 17(4): 195-198 (November 1985)." ... "proposed stacks"

On Friedrich L. Bauer it says Bauer " was the first to propose the widely used stack method of expression evaluation".

Is there a definitive answer to who was first? Can someone with the answer edit the appropriate page (and explain why so it doesn't get reverted), please? Neil Leslie 23:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The article on Friedrich L. Bauer is not very clear, but it seems to imply that he proposed the stack around 1951, and thus a few years before Hamblin. Tsf 13:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

"Hardware cellars, stacks and pushdown stores have been discussed elsewhere, possibly as early as 1947 by Alan Turing, certainly in 1949 by Harry D. Huskey in connection with the ZEPHYR (SWAC) computer and in 1956 by Willem L. van der Poel in connection with the design of the MINIMA computer; in all cases presumably for the treatment of return jumps in subroutines. More generally, Charles L. Hamblin, in a December 1957 publication [37], recommended strongly the use of hardware stacks." p. 39 F.L. Bauer 2002 From the stack principle to ALGOL, in Software pioneers: contributions to software engineering, Manfred Broy and Ernst Denert ed. 130.234.5.138 (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

(from Bill Findlay) "Turing wrote a design study for the ACE in the late 1940s that envisaged a stack of return addresses, partly managed by software, and facilitated by the equivalent of a macro-assembler! Some of his ideas were later incorporated in the pilot ACE (at NPL) and the commercially-produced DEUCE. ... It is a remarkable document, discussing everything from the programming system to whether the delay lines should be filled with alcohol or mercury."

A.M. Turing, "Proposals for the development in the Mathematics Division of an Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)." Report E882, Executive Committee, NPL February 1946. Reprinted April 1972 as NPL Report Com. Sci 57. (I believe |this is either a draft of the paper or is the cited paper itself. It discusses performing subsidiary operations that are invoked by BURY instructions and returning control by UNBURY instructions, along with a stack (LIFO) store of instruction addresses in main memory and a stack pointer in temporary storage [i.e., "TS 31"].) http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/subroutines.html 130.234.5.138 (talk) 14:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

3 valued logic as first non-classical logic?
I reoved the claim that Łukasiewicz's 3-valued logic was "the first non-classical logical calculus" Lower on the page it claims that he developed this in 1917. Brouwer's The Unreliability of the Logical Principles was 1908, so the claim that 1917 was the first non-classical logic seems hard to support. Maybe someone who knows more history of logic than I could clear this up.Neil Leslie 09:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Brouwer never formalized the logic he used for intuitionistic reasoning (he even deprecated the idea of formalizing it), and Heyting introduced his system of axioms for intuitionistic logic only in 1927/28 (published 1930). Thus it may not be true that Łukasiewicz 3-valued logic was the first non-classical logic (as intuitionistic logic was at least implicitly present), but it can be maintained that it was the first non-classical logical calculus (i.e., an explicit system of axioms). I have therefore restored the sentence, with the clarification that it was the first explicitly axiomatized non-classical calculus. LBehounek 19:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Relation with Ignacy?
Was Jan related to Ignacy Łukasiewicz, the early developer of petroleum? Axel 15:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No he wasn't. It is quite popular surname. Tomasz Raburski (talk) 02:11, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

War on all that opposes creativity?
It seems I recall reading about how Lukasiewicz by-passed certain classical laws knowing that they restrict creativity. Similarly, I believe that Lukasiewicz was said to have "declared war" on all that "opposes human creativity". If anyone knows the source of that information, feel free to reference it here in the discussion page. 74.195.25.78 (talk) 21:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

My comments on this entry
1. Lviv did not belong to Austria-Hungary within Łukasiewicz' lifetime. Since 1939 it belongs to Ukraine, a part of USSR by 1991.

2. Poland was a part of Russian Empire before 1918; the statement about "Kingdom" establishment makes little sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.56.41.247 (talk) 16:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

This entry fails to make clear that Lukasiewicz was widely seen as the leader of the Polish school of logic and philosophy that flourished between WWI and WWII. I also would not call him a mathematician.

The chronology states that Lukasiewicz published an autobiography in 1953. It is not cited in the references or in Grattan-Guinness (2000). I have never heard of this autobiography. Has anyone ever seen a copy?

His life was a good deal more turbulent than this entry lets on. He did not resign as Rector of the University of Warsaw after the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. While the brutality of that invasion appalled him, he also saw Germany as a bulwark of western civilization, and as a defense against Soviet atheistic communism. Unlike most Polish intellectuals, he neither fled Poland nor minimised his professional activities during the German occupation. Hence he came to be seen as a collaborator. Regina Lukasiewicz's Nazi sympathies were much gossiped about. I know of no other Polish mathematician, logician, or analytic philosopher who was reputed to have collaborated with the Nazis.

During the Warsaw uprising of 1944, a group of Polish mathematicians and logicians confronted Lukasiewicz. Their leader, the topologist Kazimierz Kuratowski, pistol in hand, bluntly told him that he was a collaborator and suggested that he resign from the university and leave Poland. Lukasiewicz left Warsaw for the University of Munster 1-2 days later, after sending a telegram to his friend the logician Hermann Scholtz at Munster. That Lukasiewicz was able to make this journey during wartime conditions and without German citizenship is almost per se evidence of his collaboration. A few months later, Munster was invaded by the British army. Then began about 18 difficult months of wandering and uncertainty for Lukasiewicz, which ended when he took up a professorship in Dublin in 1946. Ireland had been neutral during WWII, and its intellectual community sympathized with the sort of neo-Aristotelean thinking that Lukasiewicz favored in his last years.Palnot (talk) 17:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Historical inaccuracies
The form of this article's historic statements is partially disturbing.

1. It is completely irrelevant, that an ethnically Polish person is born at a place, which was some time before his birth part of a jurisdiction of a predecessor state of modern Poland in the sense of international law. It is already clear by statement "Polish logician and philosopher", that this person is Polish. Something similar is also stated (again), when Lwów University is mentioned. Does this imply something?

2. Lwów University was not closed under German occupation. It was closed under Soviet occupation after the city has come under Soviet administration as stated in the respective article.

If someone can convince me, that it is very important with respect to this person, that some place which was predominantly Polish, was some time part of any historic Polish state, please do so. If someone has a source, which contradicts the statement of the Lwów University article, it would also be important to change it there and possibly compare both sources if necessary. 5.146.199.130 (talk) 18:42, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I think that the nationality and not just ethnicity of the subject is relevant to the article, and it is normal to give this information.
 * My understanding of the University of Lviv article you reference is that the Soviets renamed the university but did not close it, and it was the Nazis who closed it. If there are disagreements with the claims in that article, it should be tackled there before here, because the other article is watched by more editors with the relevant knowledge. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 07:34, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've changed the first sentence. Comments welcome. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 07:41, 2 May 2018 (UTC)