On Magari's concept of general calculus: notes on the history of tarski's methodology of deductive sciences

Abstract

This paper is an historical study of Tarski's methodology of deductive sciences (in which a logic S is identified with an operator Cn S , called the consequence operator, on a given set of expressions), from its appearance in 1930 to the end of the 1970s, focusing on the work done in the field by Roberto Magari, Piero Mangani and by some of their pupils between 1965 and 1974, and comparing it with the results achieved by Tarski and the Polish school (Łoś, Suszko, Słupecki, Pogorzelski, Wójcicki). In the last section of the paper we will then compare these works with some recent developments in algebraic logic: this will lead to a better understanding of the results of the methodology of deductive science, but at the same time will show some intrinsic limits to such an approach to logic. Even if Magari's work on diagonizable algebras and universal algebra and Mangani's axiomatization of MV-algebras and results in model theory are rather famous, the articles on closure operators, published in the 1960s, are almost totally unknown outside Italy (mainly because of a linguistic limitation, the papers we analyse having been written and published in Italian). This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature and to enable the international community to get acquainted with this part of Italian logic. The same applies to some works published in Barcelona (in Catalan) at the end of the 1970s, analysed in the last section.