Leon Chwistek

Leon Chwistek (Kraków, Austria-Hungary, 13 June 1884 – 20 August 1944, Barvikha, Russia) was a Polish avant-garde painter, theoretician of modern art, literary critic, logician, philosopher and mathematician. Starting in 1929, Chwistek was a Professor of Logic at the University of Lwów in a position for which Alfred Tarski had also applied. His interests in the 1930s were in a general system of philosophy of science, which was published in a book translated in English 1948 as The Limits of Science. In the 1920s-30s, many European philosophers attempted to reform traditional philosophy by means of mathematical logic. Leon Chwistek did not believe that such reform could succeed. He thought that reality could not be described in one homogeneous system, based on the principles of formal logic, because there was not one reality but many. Chwistek argued against the axiomatic method by demonstrating that the extant axiomatic systems are inconsistent. Chwistek developed his theory of the multiplicity of realities first with regard to the arts. He distinguished four basic types of realities, then matched them with four basic types of painting. The types of realities were first the popular reality (common-sense realism) which corresponded with primitivism. The second was Physical reality (constructed by physics) which was covered by realism. Third reality was the phenomenal reality (sensory impressions) which went along with impressionism and last was the visionary/intuitive reality (dreams, hallucinations, subconscious states)which corresponded with Futurism. Chwistek never intended his views to constitute a new metaphysical theory. He was a defender of "common sense" against metaphysics and irrational feeling. His theory of plural reality was merely an attempt to specify the various ways in which the term, “real,” is used.