Festschrift in Honor of Barry Smith on the occasion of his 65th Birthday. Published as issue 4:4 of the journal Cosmos + Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. Includes contributions by Wolfgang Grassl, Nicola Guarino, John T. Kearns, Rudolf Lüthe, Luc Schneider, Peter Simons, Wojciech Żełaniec, and Jan Woleński.

In the paper, Jan Łukasiewicz’s program of the logicization of philosophy is presented and discussed. Łukasiewicz, known mostly for his invention of trivalent logic as well as his achievements in propositional calculus and metalogic, had always been concerned with the methodological condition of philosophy. He finally found “the measure of exactness” in mathematical logic. According to him, only the use of logical tools may provide philosophical investigations with an appropriate level of exactness. He expressed his views most firmly and directly (...) in the paper, “A call for the method of Philosophy”. Łukasiewicz proposed giving philosophical theories the form of axiomatic systems by indicating the primitive terms of their language, selecting suitable axioms, and explicitly determining the applied rules of inference. All the theses of these systems should be consequences of the accepted axioms and confronted with the data of experience and the results of science. Łukasiewicz’s program is presented together with its inspirations and prospects. (shrink)