Talk:Bernard Bolzano

A difficult, but important, article to improve on

I learnt a lot from this article, it struck me as well-written and well-informed, and so was a little surprised to discover that it only had a 'starter' rating. I thought that maybe I could improve on it myself, but when I looked into it, Bolzano is a VERY difficult and obscure philosopher. This article has all that one could want from an introduction to further study - some intellectual background, a biography, an (impressive)outline of his work, a good bibliography - but given that not only Bolzano's works themselves, but also most(what little there is of it) of contemporary Bolzano scholarship is very esoteric, it makes this a very difficult article to improve upon. I am a graduate philosophy student specialising in logic and metaphyisics and thought that if this article was that bad, there must be SOMETHING I could do to improve it. Sadly, not.

Wiki either your standards are too high or the wiki philosophers need some help on this one!

Wireless99 10:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Where the stress goes in his first and last name? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reminiscenza (talk • contribs) 15:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Bernard Bolzano. (Four years, nevermind...) Zero Thrust (talk) 01:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit

Hi. By way of justification, I just deleted a sentence from the mathematical contributions section. It was to the effect that one of Bolzano's accomplishments was in "parallelogram area theory" to discover that the area of two similar rhombuses varies with the squares of their widths. This is obvious, and if Bolzano did note it he certainly wasn't the first. I suspect it was a somewhat lame attempt at "vandalism." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.43.9.175 (talk) 08:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Bolzano on infinitesimals

What is the source for the claim that Bolzano was sceptical about infinitesimals? Tkuvho (talk) 14:08, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

You can find some references to Bolzano's texts in: The mathematical works of Bernard Bolzano edited by Steve Russ, pp. 143 ss. Raul Corazzon 14:33, 19 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ontoraul (talk • contribs)

I am familiar with references to Bolzano's texts in secondary literature, including references to his use of infinitesimals. What I am not familiar with are references to a sceptical mention of them by Bolzano. Are you implying that Russ quotes such sceptical remarks by Bolzano? Tkuvho (talk) 14:37, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

You can see the reference I cited in Google Books: "Bolzano says that the usual definition of infinitesimal quantitites as 'actually smaller than every ... conceivable quantity is contradictory' (der Binomische Lehrsatz (1816), Die Drei probleme der Rectification... Preface (1817) Raul Corazzon 17:19, 19 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ontoraul (talk • contribs)

Yes, thanks, I saw that discussion. I should have looked it up before challenging your comment. What I find particularly interesting is the discussion appearing on pages 283-284 in Russ's book. Just as Bolzano gets into challenging the Archimedean axiom, the discussion gets interrupted because page 285 is not available on the web! Would you have a copy of this by any chance? I am very interested in finding out how the discussion of the Archimedean axiom by Bolzano is concluded. I have the impression he challenges this assumption as much as the definitions (and uses) of infinitesimals that he finds lacking. Tkuvho (talk) 11:23, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You can made a search in Amazon Books: just try in Search Inside This Book": "Legendre, whose proof has been said" and page 285 should appear. Raul Corazzon (talk) 13:03, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That's page 275, not 285. I doubt it that Amazon would reveal a page that the publisher deliberately concealed :) Tkuvho (talk) 13:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Categories by country

Hi, Is the label Czech (philosopher, mathematician and so on) really accurate here ? (open question, I am not in favour of any other)--Keith Roth 22:35, 8 February 2013 (UTC) ---I addressed the concern by replacing all mention of his being Czech with one, "People from Prague". In the absence of any ad hoc category, it seemed a better solution.--Keith 21:05, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Infobox -parameter : influenced By -Kant +Leibniz

In the box, I removed Kant and put Leibniz. (1) Although Kant has been clearly VERY important for Bolzano, I find misleading to put his name here (in the box) as long as it suggests a continuity, school or heritage. (2) Which is truer or simply true, from Leibniz to Bolzano. See the Stanford Enc. for instance. --Keith 20:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Bolzano's mother

I think it was a mistake to call Bolzanos mothers father Italian, right? All other pages say he was German, even the italian page. If he would have been Italian, Bolzanos mothers German name would be surprising. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Malzkorn (talk • contribs) 12:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see WP:V and WP:NOR. --Omnipaedista (talk) 12:36, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Wording issue

I changed "This is, however, only a very small fraction of all the truths that are out there..." to "This is, however, only a very small fraction of all the truths that exist..." If anyone considers this a mistake, send me a message, please. Tapered (talk) 02:04, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Eastern European

"Bolzano continued to develop his ideas and publish them either on his own or in obscure Eastern European journals. "

The category of "Eastern European" did not exist at B.'s times, being basically a product of the Cold War 2003:E6:3DA:4611:F495:5BEF:FEA5:8254 (talk) Żełaniec —Preceding undated comment added 21:37, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Section on Wissenschaftslehre

I don't think this whole section is appropriate for this article - I feel that most of it should be moved into a separate article. --Jordan Mitchell Barrett (talk) 09:21, 30 December 2020 (UTC)