Bolzano, Kant and the Traditional Theory of Concepts: A Computational Investigation

Recent research shows that valuable contributions are obtained by applying even rather simple, well-known computational techniques to texts relevant to the work of researchers in history and philosophy of science (van Wierst et al. 2016). In this paper we substantiate the point by relying on computational text analysis in addressing an open question regarding Bernard Bolzano’s work on the general methodology of the sciences. We investigate to which extent Bolzano followed Kant in seeing concepts as hierarchically ordered by means of definition via compositional analysis by genus proximum and differentia specifica. We show that Bolzano did follow Kant on this traditional doctrine point to a large extent, although Bolzano's conceptual hierarchy is based on subordination rather than composition relations, and that definitions play for Bolzano a merely subjective role. We include a discussion of the computational methodology, and link appendix describing corpus and step-by-step workings of the algorithm applied.