Adolf Dygasiński, *Logic According to John Stuart Mill* [1879]

Title: Logic According to John Stuart Mill.

Author: John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) [English philosopher and economist, a leading figure of 19th-century empiricism and liberalism]; summarized by Adolf Dygasiński (1839–1902) [novelist, journalist, and science popularizer, one of the leading figures of Polish naturalism].

Publisher: Warsaw, published by the editorial staff of *Przegląd Tygodniowy*.

Year of publication: 1879.

Format: 23 cm.

Volume: 354, [2] pp.

Binding: Period half-leather binding.

“Logic According to John Stuart Mill” is not a complete translation, but rather an extensive summary of *A System of Logic* (1843), the most important philosophical work by the English thinker. In it, Mill developed a methodology for the empirical sciences and a theory of inductive reasoning, the rules of which are known today as Mill’s canons. The book was published by the editorial staff of the Warsaw-based *Przegląd Tygodniowy* (“Weekly Review”), the main journal of the young positivists. In the 1870s, the journal led a debate on the modernization of Polish intellectual culture, and its contributors included Aleksander Świętochowski, Julian Ochorowicz, and Piotr Chmielowski. The choice of Mill was no accident, as his empiricism and reverence for the scientific method formed the philosophical foundation of the entire movement. A complete Polish translation of *System of Logic*, translated by Czesław Znamierowski, was not published until 1962. For nearly a century, therefore, Dygasiński’s work served as the primary Polish introduction to this classic text.

Adolf Dygasiński was born on March 7, 1839, in Niegosławice near Pińczów. He studied at the Warsaw University of Technology and participated in the January Uprising. For many years, he worked as a teacher and journalist, and he translated and edited works in the fields of natural sciences, philosophy, social thought, and pedagogy. “Logika” fits perfectly into this strand of his work. He made his debut as a prose writer in the 1880s and quickly became one of the leading representatives of Polish naturalism. He gained fame for his short stories about the animal world and rural life, including “At the Manor,” “Hunger and Love,” “The Hare,” and “The Prime of Life,” which were translated into Russian and German. He also published “Letters from Brazil,” an account of his journey to visit Polish emigrants in South America. He died on June 3, 1902, in Grodzisk Mazowiecki and is buried at Powązki Cemetery.

Provenance: no ownership inscriptions or seals.

This is a positivist study of philosophical classics written by a future outstanding prose writer, in a period half-leather binding. A must-have for historians of philosophy and logic, scholars of Polish Positivism, and collectors of Dygasiński’s writings and 19th-century Warsaw publications.

The text block is clean and intact; the pages are free of stains. Contemporary half-leather binding with natural signs of age.

Catalog ID: 4027-23-A-Z