Explication ( German : Explikation ) is the process of drawing out the meaning of something which is not clearly defined, so as to make explicit what is currently left implicit. The term explication is used in both analytic philosophy and literary criticism . Rudolf Carnap was the first to coin the term in an analytic philosophical approach in his book Logical Foundations of Probability , while the term is supplanted with Gustave Lanson ’s idea of Explication de Texte when referring to the analysis and criticism of different forms of literature.
86-469: In analytic philosophy, the concept of explication was first developed by Rudolf Carnap . Explication can be regarded as a scientific process which transforms and replaces "an inexact prescientific concept" (which Carnap calls the explicandum), with a "new exact concept" (which he calls the explicatum). A description and explanation of the nature and impact of the new explicit knowledge is usually called an "explication". The new explicit knowledge draws on, and
172-445: A bridge between the different disciplines that are geometry, physics and philosophy. For Carnap thought that in many instances those disciplines use the same concepts, but with totally different meanings. The main objective of Carnap's dissertation was to show that the inconsistencies between theories concerning space only existed because philosophers, as well as mathematicians and scientists, were talking about different things while using
258-462: A definition which incorporates it into a well-constructed system of scientific either logicomathematical or empirical concepts." In this context, 'explication' is now regarded as "an appropriate methodology for formal philosophy". (Maher, 2007). By contrast, in literary criticism , the term 'explication' is used as a proxy for the term explication de texte (proposed by Gustave Lanson ), where additional understandings and meanings are derived from
344-531: A doctoral thesis called Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre ( Space: A Contribution to the Theory of Science , 1922). In this dissertation on the philosophical foundations of geometry , Carnap tried to provide a logical basis for a theory of space and time in physics . Considering that Carnap was interested in pure mathematics , natural sciences and philosophy, his dissertation can be seen as an attempt to build
430-525: A form of hermeneutics : knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions – including the interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts. In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness
516-477: A full theory of the logical structure of scientific language. This theory, exposed in Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934; translated as The Logical Syntax of Language , 1937) gives the foundations to his idea that scientific language has a specific formal structure and that its signs are governed by the rules of deductive logic. Moreover, the theory of logical syntax expounds a method with which one can talk about
602-455: A fundamental arrangement where concepts can be reduced and converted to other basic ones. Carnap explains that a concept can be reduced to another when all sentences containing the first concept can be transformed into sentences containing the other. In other words, every scientific sentence should be translatable into another sentence such that the original terms have the same reference as the translated terms. Most significantly, Carnap argues that
688-471: A given more or less inexact concept into an exact one or, rather, in replacing the first by the second. We call the given concept (or the term used for it) the explicandum, and the exact concept proposed to take the place of the first (or the term proposed for it) the explicatum. The explicandum may belong to everyday language or to a previous stage in the development of scientific language. The explicatum must be given by explicit rules for its use, for example, by
774-729: A kindred spirit when he met Hans Reichenbach at a 1923 conference. Reichenbach introduced Carnap to Moritz Schlick , a professor at the University of Vienna who offered Carnap a position in his department, which Carnap accepted in 1926. Carnap thereupon joined an informal group of Viennese intellectuals that came to be known as the Vienna Circle , directed largely by Schlick and including Hans Hahn , Friedrich Waismann , Otto Neurath , and Herbert Feigl , with occasional visits by Hahn's student Kurt Gödel . When Wittgenstein visited Vienna, Carnap would meet with him. He (with Hahn and Neurath) wrote
860-407: A language: it is a formal meta-theory about the pure forms of language. In the end, because Carnap argues that philosophy aims at the logical analysis of the language of science and thus is the logic of science, the theory of the logical syntax can be considered as a definite language and a conceptual framework for philosophy. The logical syntax of language is a formal theory. It is not concerned with
946-502: A profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three Abrahamic religions : Jewish literature , Christian literature and Islamic literature . Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic literature and Arabic poetry from the 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan , and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz in his Kitab al-Badi . The literary criticism of
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#17328560367671032-617: A rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory , influenced by structuralism , then post-structuralism , and other kinds of Continental philosophy . It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions. Today, approaches based in literary theory and continental philosophy largely coexist in university literature departments, while conventional methods, some informed by
1118-476: A sentence can be said to follow, or to be the consequence, of another sentence. The definitions included in the calculus state the conditions under which a sentence can be considered of a certain type and how those sentences can be transformed. We can see the logical syntax as a method of formal transformation, i.e. a method for calculating and reasoning with symbols. Finally, Carnap introduces his well known "principle of tolerance." This principle suggests that there
1204-423: A sophisticated device introduced by Carnap to dismiss any form of dogmatism in philosophy. After having considered problems in semantics, i.e. the theory of the concepts of meaning and truth ( Foundations of Logic and Mathematics , 1939; Introduction to Semantics , 1942; Formalization of Logic , 1943), Carnap turned his attention to the subject of probability and inductive logic . His views on that subject are for
1290-459: A specific criterion of meaning, namely the Wittgensteinian principle of verifiability. Indeed, he requires, as a precondition of meaningfulness, that all sentences be verifiable, which implies that a sentence is meaningful only if there is a way to verify if it is true or false. To verify a sentence, one needs to expound the empirical conditions and circumstances that would establish the truth of
1376-603: A stint at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1952–1954), he joined the UCLA Department of Philosophy in 1954, Hans Reichenbach having died the previous year. He had earlier refused an offer of a similar job at the University of California, Berkeley , because accepting that position required that he sign a loyalty oath , a practice to which he was opposed on principle. While at UCLA, he wrote on scientific knowledge,
1462-407: A theory of induction should explain how, by pure logical analysis, we can ascertain that certain evidence establishes a degree of confirmation strong enough to confirm a given hypothesis. Carnap was convinced that there was a logical as well as an empirical dimension in science. He believed that one had to isolate the experiential elements from the logical elements of a given body of knowledge. Hence,
1548-476: A thesis in physics . He also intently studied Immanuel Kant 's Critique of Pure Reason during a course taught by Bruno Bauch , and was one of very few students to attend Gottlob Frege 's courses in mathematical logic . During his university years he became enthralled with the German Youth Movement . While Carnap held moral and political opposition to World War I , he felt obligated to serve in
1634-473: Is an explication of our natural concept of cause. Natural language will only specify truth conditions for propositions of the form "If p, then q" for situations where "p" is true. (Most of us probably don't have any clear intuitions regarding the truth conditions of the sentence "If I go out in the sun, I will get sunburned" in situations where I never go out in the sun.) An explication of the conditional will also specify truth conditions for situations where "p"
1720-955: Is an improvement upon, previous knowledge. An explication in the Carnapian sense is purely stipulative, and thus a subclass of normative definitions. Hence, an explication can not be true or false, just more or less suitable for its purpose. (Cf. Rorty's argument about the purpose and value of philosophy in Rorty (2003), "A pragmatist view of contemporary analytic philosophy", in Egginton, W. and Sandbothe, M. (Eds), The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy, SUNY Press, New York, NY.) Examples of inexact daily life concepts in need of explication are our concepts of cause and of conditionals. Our daily life concept of cause does not distinguish between necessary causes, sufficient causes, complete causes etc. Each of these more precise concepts
1806-458: Is interesting to note that it is in this dissertation that the main themes of Carnap's philosophy appear, most importantly the idea that many philosophical contradictions appear because of a misuse of language, and a stress on the importance of distinguishing formal and material modes of speech. From 1922 to 1925, Carnap worked on a book which became one of his major works, namely Der logische Aufbau der Welt (translated as The Logical Structure of
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#17328560367671892-458: Is logical and deals with the degree to which a given hypothesis is confirmed by a piece of evidence. It is the degree of confirmation . The second is empirical, and relates to the long run rate of one observable feature of nature relative to another. It is the relative frequency. Statements belonging to the second concepts are about reality and describe states of affairs. They are empirical and, therefore, must be based on experimental procedures and
1978-410: Is made of meaningless discussions of pseudo-problems. For Carnap, a pseudo-problem is a philosophical question which, on the surface, handles concepts that refer to our world while, in fact, these concepts do not actually denote real and attested objects. In other words, these pseudo-problems concern statements that do not, in any way, have empirical implications. They do not refer to states of affairs and
2064-404: Is no moral in logic. When it comes to using a language, there is no good or bad, fundamentally true or false. In this perspective, the philosopher's task is not to bring authoritative interdicts prohibiting the use of certain concepts. In contrast, philosophers should seek general agreements over the relevance of certain logical devices. According to Carnap, those agreements are possible only through
2150-435: Is not true. Carnap's argument provides a helpful foundation in understanding and clarifying the nature and value of explication in defining and describing "new" knowledge. Others' reviews of Carnap's argument offer additional insights about the nature of explication. In particular, Bonolio's paper (2003) "Kant’s Explication and Carnap’s Explication: The Redde Rationem", and Maher's (2007) "Explication defended", add weight to
2236-422: Is said be more or less likely to be the case. In fact, Carnap claims that the problem of induction is a matter of finding a precise explanation of the logical relation that holds between a hypothesis and the evidence that supports it. An inductive logic is thus based on the idea that probability is a logical relation between two types of statements: the hypothesis (conclusion) and the premises (evidence). Accordingly,
2322-482: Is that these explications can fit into natural language, even if it sounds very awkward. For example: Explications in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage are neither exact dictionary definitions, nor encyclopedic explanations of a concept. They often differ slightly depending upon the personal experiences of the person writing them. In this way, they can be said to "rely heavily on 'folk theories,' that is,
2408-399: Is the correct language; what matters is agreeing over which language best suits a particular purpose. Carnap explains that the choice of a language should be guided according to the security it provides against logical inconsistency. Furthermore, practical elements like simplicity and fruitfulness in certain tasks influence the choice of a language. Clearly enough, the principle of tolerance was
2494-448: Is the only source of knowledge of the external world, i.e. the world outside the realm of human perception. According to Carnap, philosophical propositions are statements about the language of science; they aren't true or false, but merely consist of definitions and conventions about the use of certain concepts. In contrast, scientific propositions are factual statements about the external reality. They are meaningful because they are based on
2580-561: The London Review of Books , the Dublin Review of Books , The Nation , Bookforum , and The New Yorker . Literary criticism is thought to have existed as far back as the classical period. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote the Poetics , a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art. Poetics developed for the first time
2666-476: The Enlightenment period (1700s–1800s), literary criticism became more popular. During this time literacy rates started to rise in the public; no longer was reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public, the swiftness of printing and commercialization of literature, criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it
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2752-738: The New Critics , also remain active. Disagreements over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the "rise" of theory, have declined. Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in nontraditional texts and women's literature , as elaborated on by certain academic journals such as Contemporary Women's Writing , while some critics influenced by cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or pulp / genre fiction . Ecocritics have drawn connections between literature and
2838-494: The Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism , proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla 's Latin translation of Aristotle 's Poetics . The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics ,
2924-473: The analytic–synthetic distinction , and the verification principle . His writings on thermodynamics and on the foundations of probability and inductive logic , were published posthumously as Carnap (1971, 1977, 1980). Carnap taught himself Esperanto when he was 14 years of age, and remained sympathetic to it (Carnap 1963). He later attended the World Congress of Esperanto in 1908 and 1922, and employed
3010-462: The history of the book is a field of interdisciplinary inquiry drawing on the methods of bibliography , cultural history , history of literature , and media theory . Principally concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect forms of textuality with their material aspects. Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are:
3096-487: The natural semantic metalanguage theory, explications are semantic representations of vocabulary. These explications are made up of a very limited set of words called semantic primes which are considered to have universal meaning across all languages. An example of an explication of the word happy : What sets the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Theory's explications apart from previous theories,
3182-581: The " close reading " of (say) a poem, novel or play. In this process, explication often involves a line-by-line or episode-by-episode commentary on what is going on in a text. While initially this might seem reasonably innocuous, explication de texte , and explication per se, is an interpretative process where the resulting new knowledge, new insights or new meanings, are open to subsequent debate and disaffirmation by others. Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap ( / ˈ k ɑːr n æ p / ; German: [ˈkaʁnaːp] ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970)
3268-568: The 1929 manifesto of the Circle, and (with Hans Reichenbach ) initiated the philosophy journal Erkenntnis . In February 1930 Alfred Tarski lectured in Vienna, and during November 1930 Carnap visited Warsaw. On these occasions he learned much about Tarski's model theoretic method of semantics . Rose Rand , another philosopher in the Vienna Circle, noted, "Carnap's conception of semantics starts from
3354-465: The German army. After three years of service, he was given permission to study physics at the University of Berlin , 1917–18, where Albert Einstein was a newly appointed professor. Carnap then attended the University of Jena , where he wrote a thesis defining an axiomatic theory of space and time . The physics department said it was too philosophical, and Bruno Bauch of the philosophy department said it
3440-633: The Philosophical Archives at the University of Konstanz in Germany. *For a more complete listing see Carnap’s Works in "Linked bibliography ". Literary criticism A genre of arts criticism , literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation , and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory , which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although
3526-536: The University of Pittsburgh Library System's Archives and Special Collections. Digitized contents include: Much material is written in an older German shorthand, the Stolze-Schrey system. He employed this writing system extensively beginning in his student days. Some of the content has been digitized and is available through the finding aid . The University of California also maintains a collection of Rudolf Carnap Papers. Microfilm copies of his papers are maintained by
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3612-429: The University of Pittsburgh, with subsequent further accessions. Documents that contain financial, medical, and personal information are restricted. These were written over his entire life and career. Carnap used the mail regularly to discuss philosophical problems with hundreds of others. The most notable were: Herbert Feigl, Carl Gustav Hempel, Felix Kaufmann, Otto Neurath, and Moritz Schlick. Photographs are also part of
3698-580: The World , 1967), which was accepted in 1926 as his habilitation thesis at the University of Vienna and published as a book in 1928. That achievement has become a landmark in modern epistemology and can be read as a forceful statement of the philosophical thesis of logical positivism. Indeed, the Aufbau suggests that epistemology, based on modern symbolic logic , is concerned with the logical analysis of scientific propositions, while science itself, based on experience,
3784-544: The Yahoos". The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary studies, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime . German Romanticism , which followed closely after the late development of German classicism , emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to
3870-450: The argument that explication is an appropriate methodology for formal philosophy. The word "explicate" is a verb referring to the process of explicating. The word "explication" is a noun referring to the outcome of that process: the explicative work itself. As conceptual clarity is an important element of analytic philosophy , it is important to use words according to their proper definitions so as to avoid causing unnecessary confusion. In
3956-514: The author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or reader response : together known as Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy and affective fallacy . This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves. In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism . In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on
4042-453: The basic function of these rules is to provide the principles to safeguard coherence, to avoid contradictions and to deduce justified conclusions. Carnap sees language as a calculus. This calculus is a systematic arrangement of symbols and relations. The symbols of the language are organized according to the class that they belong to---and it is through their combination that we can form sentences. The relations are different conditions under which
4128-582: The basis given in Tarski's work but a distinction is made between logical and non-logical constants and between logical and factual truth... At the same time he worked with the concepts of intension and extension and took these two concepts as a basis of a new method of semantics." In 1931, Carnap was appointed Professor at the German University of Prague . In 1933, W. V. Quine met Carnap in Prague and discussed
4214-402: The basis of a few fundamental concepts. From 1928 to 1934, Carnap published papers ( Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie , 1928; translated as Pseudoproblems in Philosophy , 1967) in which he appears overtly skeptical of the aims and methods of metaphysics , i.e. the traditional philosophy that finds its roots in mythical and religious thought. Indeed, he discusses how, in many cases, metaphysics
4300-516: The basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his own adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery. Jürgen Habermas , in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] ( Knowledge and Human Interests ), described literary critical theory in literary studies as
4386-404: The basis of this system is psychological. Its content is the "immediately given", which is made of basic elements, namely perceptual experiences. These basic elements consist of conscious psychological states of a single human subject. In the end, Carnap argues that his constitutional project demonstrates the possibility of defining and uniting all scientific concepts in a single conceptual system on
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#17328560367674472-587: The collection and were taken throughout his life. Family pictures and photographs of his peers and colleagues are also stored in the collection. Some of the correspondence is considered notable and consist of his student notes, his seminars with Frege, (describing the Begriffsschrift and the logic in mathematics). Carnap's notes from Russell's seminar in Chicago, and notes he took from discussions with Tarski, Heisenberg, Quine, Hempel, Gödel, and Jeffrey are also part of
4558-455: The concepts of mimesis and catharsis , which are still crucial in literary studies. Plato 's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. The Sanskrit Natya Shastra includes literary criticism on ancient Indian literature and Sanskrit drama. Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had
4644-405: The concepts, methods and justificatory processes that exist in science. Carnap believed that the difficulty with traditional philosophy lay in the use of concepts that are not useful for science. For Carnap, the scientific legitimacy of these concepts was doubtful, because the sentences containing them do not express facts. Indeed, a logical analysis of those sentences proves that they do not convey
4730-417: The contextualized meaning or the truth-value of sentences. In contrast, it considers the general structure of a given language and explores the different structural relations that connect the elements of that language. Hence, by explaining the different operations that allow specific transformations within the language, the theory is a systematic exposition of the rules that operate within that language. In fact,
4816-483: The detailed presentation of the meaning and use of the expressions of a language. In other words, Carnap believes that every logical language is correct only if this language is supported by exact definitions and not by philosophical presumptions. Carnap embraces a formal conventionalism. That implies that formal languages are constructed and that everyone is free to choose the language it finds more suited to his purpose. There should not be any controversy over which language
4902-417: The empirical concept of frequency used in statistics to describe the general features of certain phenomena can be distinguished from the analytical concepts of probability logic that merely describe logical relations between sentences. For Carnap, the statistical and the logical concepts must be investigated separately. Having insisted on this distinction, Carnap defines two concepts of probability. The first one
4988-489: The language while traveling. Carnap had four children by his first marriage to Elizabeth Schöndube, which ended in divorce in 1929. He married his second wife, Elizabeth Ina Stöger, in 1933. Ina committed suicide in 1964. Below is an examination of the main topics in the evolution of the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. It is not exhaustive, but it outlines Carnap's main works and contributions to modern epistemology and philosophy of logic . From 1919 to 1921, Carnap worked on
5074-519: The latter's work at some length. Thus began the lifelong mutual respect these two men shared, one that survived Quine's eventual forceful disagreements with a number of Carnap's philosophical conclusions. Carnap, whose socialist and pacifist beliefs put him at risk in Nazi Germany , emigrated to the United States in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1941. Meanwhile, back in Vienna, Schlick
5160-443: The meaning of states of affairs. In other words, these sentences are meaningless. Carnap explains that to be meaningful, a sentence should be factual. It can be so, for one thing, by being based on experience, i.e. by being formulated with words relating to direct observations. For another, a sentence is factual if one can clearly state what are the observations that could confirm or disconfirm that sentence. After all, Carnap presupposes
5246-485: The most part exposed in Logical foundations of probability (1950) where Carnap aims to give a sound logical interpretation of probability. Carnap thought that according to certain conditions, the concept of probability had to be interpreted as a purely logical concept. In this view, probability is a basic concept anchored in all inductive inferences, whereby the conclusion of every inference that holds without deductive necessity
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#17328560367675332-399: The natural sciences. Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the context of evolutionary influences on human nature. And postcritique has sought to develop new ways of reading and responding to literary texts that go beyond the interpretive methods of critique . Many literary critics also work in film criticism or media studies . Related to other forms of literary criticism,
5418-574: The new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the school of criticism known as Russian Formalism , and slightly later the New Criticism in Britain and in the United States, came to dominate the study and discussion of literature in the English-speaking world. Both schools emphasized the close reading of texts, elevating it far above generalizing discussion and speculation about either authorial intention (to say nothing of
5504-475: The notions of symbolic logic. Accordingly, the purpose of this constitutional system is to identify and discern different classes of scientific concepts and to specify the logical relations that link them. In the Aufbau, concepts are taken to denote objects, relations, properties, classes and states. Carnap argues that all concepts must be ranked over a hierarchy. In that hierarchy, all concepts are organized according to
5590-427: The observation of relevant facts. On the contrary, statements belonging to the first concept do not say anything about facts. Their meaning can be grasped solely with an analysis of the signs they contain. They are analytical sentences, i.e. true by virtue of their logical meaning. Even though these sentences could refer to states of affairs, their meaning is given by the symbols and relations they contain. In other words,
5676-420: The only members of the department committed to the primacy of science and logic. (Their Chicago colleagues included Richard McKeon , Charles Hartshorne , and Manley Thompson.) Carnap's years at Chicago were nonetheless very productive ones. He wrote books on semantics (Carnap 1942, 1943, 1956), modal logic , and on the philosophical foundations of probability and inductive logic (Carnap 1950, 1952). After
5762-469: The perceptions of the senses. In other words, the truth or falsity of those propositions can be verified by testing their content with further observations. In the Aufbau , Carnap wants to display the logical and conceptual structure with which all scientific (factual) statements can be organized. Carnap gives the label " constitution theory " to this epistemic-logical project. It is a constructive undertaking that systematizes scientific knowledge according to
5848-432: The probability of a conclusion is given by the logical relation it has to the evidence. The evaluation of the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis is thus a problem of meaning analysis. Clearly, the probability of a statement about relative frequency can be unknown; because it depends on the observation of certain phenomena, one may not possess the information needed to establish the value of that probability. Consequently,
5934-494: The publication of Emanuele Tesauro 's Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654. This seminal treatise – inspired by Giambattista Marino 's epic Adone and the work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracián – developed a theory of metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth. In
6020-481: The rather naive understandings that most of us have about how life, the universe, and everything work." Explications of abstract concepts, such as color, do not list any scientific facts about the object or concrete definitions. Instead, the explications use comparisons and examples from the real world. The terms explication and explication de texte have different meanings. As argued by Carnap (1950), in science and philosophy, "explication consists in transforming
6106-447: The reader of English literature, and valued Witz – that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort – more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for their literary criticism than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold . However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism derive almost entirely from
6192-514: The same "space" word. Hence, Carnap characteristically argued that there had to be three separate notions of space. "Formal" space is space in the sense of mathematics: it is an abstract system of relations. "Intuitive" space is made of certain contents of intuition independent of single experiences. "Physical" space is made of actual spatial facts given in experience. The upshot is that those three kinds of "space" imply three different kinds of knowledge and thus three different kinds of investigations. It
6278-418: The sciences. He wrote a letter to Russell, who responded by copying by hand long passages from his Principia Mathematica for Carnap's benefit, as neither Carnap nor his university could afford a copy of this epochal work. In 1924 and 1925, he attended seminars led by Edmund Husserl , the founder of phenomenology , and continued to write on physics from a logical positivist perspective. Carnap discovered
6364-452: The sentence. As a result, it is clear for Carnap that metaphysical sentences are meaningless. They include concepts like "god", "soul" and "the absolute" that transcend experience and cannot be traced back or connected to direct observations. Because those sentences cannot be verified in any way, Carnap suggests that science, as well as philosophy, should neither consider nor contain them. At that point in his career, Carnap attempted to develop
6450-606: The terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals , and more popular critics publish their reviews in broadly circulating periodicals such as The Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times Book Review , The New York Review of Books ,
6536-441: The things they denote cannot be perceived. Consequently, one of Carnap's main aim has been to redefine the purpose and method of philosophy. According to him, philosophy should not aim at producing any knowledge transcending the knowledge of science. In contrast, by analyzing the language and propositions of science, philosophers should define the logical foundations of scientific knowledge. Using symbolic logic , they should explicate
6622-415: The two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses
6708-586: The value of that statement can be confirmed only if it is corroborated with facts. In contrast, the probability of a statement about the degree of confirmation could be unknown, in the sense that one may miss the correct logical method to evaluate its exact value. But, such a statement can always receive a certain logical value, given the fact that this value only depends on the meaning of its symbols. The Rudolf Carnap Papers contain thousands of letters, notes and drafts, and diaries. The majority of his papers were purchased from his daughter, Hanna Carnap-Thost in 1974, by
6794-509: Was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism . Carnap's father had risen from being a poor ribbon-weaver to be the owner of a ribbon-making factory. His mother came from an academic family; her father was an educational reformer and her oldest brother
6880-408: Was a form of entertainment. Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear, bold, precise writing and the more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs. These critical reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. The commercialization of literature and its mass production had its downside. The emergent literary market, which
6966-601: Was expected to educate the public and keep them away from superstition and prejudice, increasingly diverged from the idealistic control of the Enlightenment theoreticians so that the business of Enlightenment became a business with the Enlightenment. This development – particularly of emergence of entertainment literature – was addressed through an intensification of criticism. Many works of Jonathan Swift , for instance, were criticized including his book Gulliver's Travels , which one critic described as "the detestable story of
7052-522: Was murdered in 1936. From 1936 to 1952, Carnap was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago . During the late 1930s, Carnap offered an assistant position in philosophy to Carl Gustav Hempel , who accepted and became one of his most significant intellectual collaborators. Thanks partly to Quine's help, Carnap spent the years 1939–41 at Harvard University , where he was reunited with Tarski. Carnap (1963) later expressed some irritation about his time at Chicago, where he and Charles W. Morris were
7138-459: Was pure physics. Carnap then wrote another thesis in 1921, under Bauch's supervision, on the theory of space in a more orthodox Kantian style, and published as Der Raum ( Space ) in a supplemental issue of Kant-Studien (1922). Frege's course exposed him to Bertrand Russell 's work on logic and philosophy, which put a sense of the aims to his studies. He accepted the effort to surpass traditional philosophy with logical innovations that inform
7224-598: Was the archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld . As a ten-year-old, Carnap accompanied Wilhelm Dörpfeld on an expedition to Greece. Carnap was raised in a profoundly religious Protestant family, but later became an atheist. He began his formal education at the Barmen Gymnasium and the Carolo-Alexandrinum [ de ] Gymnasium in Jena . From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena , intending to write
7310-536: Was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570. The seventeenth-century witnessed the first full-fledged crisis in modernity of the core critical-aesthetic principles inherited from classical antiquity , such as proportion, harmony, unity, decorum , that had long governed, guaranteed, and stabilized Western thinking about artworks. Although Classicism
7396-552: Was very far from spent as a cultural force, it was to be gradually challenged by a rival movement, namely Baroque, that favoured the transgressive and the extreme, without laying claim to the unity, harmony, or decorum that supposedly distinguished both nature and its greatest imitator, namely ancient art. The key concepts of the Baroque aesthetic, such as " conceit ' ( concetto ), " wit " ( acutezza , ingegno ), and " wonder " ( meraviglia ), were not fully developed in literary theory until
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