752 Book Reviews

the common believer of medieval society [with] the idea of a world determined from the beginning, a world in which good and bad men are distinctly delineated from each other’ (p. 172).

In his last chapter (“‘High” and “Low”: The Medieval Grotesque’, pp. 176210) Gurevich to a point criticises Mikhail Bakhtin’s (implicit) view of popular culture as a culture of laughter2 and works out ‘an organic feature of a religiosity that perceived the sacred elevated in unity with the “lower” and the crudely material’ (p. 205).

The literary historian might feel a little uneasy about how Gurevich selected and compared his texts from different centuries, yet he is conscious of the problems implicated and describes his methodological proceedings to the reader. Furthermore the striking likeness of the chosen texts confirms the tenacity of popular belief throughout the whole era. His convincing results prove that aside learned culture ‘its anonymous substrata, which it influenced, and from which it undoubtedly received certain impulses, traditions

and cliches of behaviour, reveal an astonishing similarity’ (p. 224). Apart from the information given in the notes (pp. 226-258) and the bibliography

(pp. 259-271) the book is provided with an index- unfortunately containing only names: Gurevich’s manifold treatment of various motifs would have deserved a thematic index as

well.

Universiry of Vienna Giinter Zimmermann

NOTES

1. Aron Gurevich, Kategorii srednevekovoi kult’ury (Moscow, 1972); trans. G.L. Campbell as Categories of Medieval Culture (London, 1985).

2. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, 2nd edn (Moscow, 1963); trans. C. Emerson as Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis, 1984); Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul’tura srednevekov’ia Renesansa; trans. H. Iswolsky as Rabe~aisa~d his world, (Cambridge, MA, 1968). Germ. trans. A. Kaempfe as Literalur and Karneval, Zur Ro~a~theorie und LachkuI~ur (Munchen, 1969).

Texte zur Systematologie der Wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis, Johann Heinrich Lambert (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988), CII + 160~~.

This is a very welcome and worthy volume, which makes available to the modern reader a most important philosophical work on the systematic theory of scientific epistemology by the German philosopher L.H. Lambert, with the text prepared by Horst D. Brant. Contemporary debates on philosophy and critical theory have moved far beyond Lambert, so it is very important to revive interest in his fundamental theory. Together with the detailed and well-written hermeneutical preface by Geo Siegwart, the book is an excellent example of his fascinating and original approach.

The inner unity and systematic completeness which characterized the thought of German Enlightenment reached one of its peaks in Lambert’s work. His name is mainly known to students of Kant and German Idealism as a pre-critical philosopher who exerted some influence on Kant; their correspondence was studied by generations of scholars as important documentation on the development of Kant’s thinking from the appearance of

Book Reviews 7.53

the Inaugural Dissertation in 1770 to the advent of The Critique @Pure Reason in 178 1. At the same time, Lambert’s significant and original role in the history of philosophy and of the natural sciences has been neglected.

Born on 26 August 1728 in Muelhausen, Alsace, Johann Heinrich Lambert was a man of varied interests: ancient languages, geometry, astronomy, physics, philosophy, music, religion etc. His early death on 25 September 1777 cut short a flourishing philosophical and scientific career.

In his general world view, Lambert was a true ‘universal scholar’ who sought to rediscover Leibniz’s original legacy. Dissatisfied with post Leibnizian philosophy as formulated by Wolff and his school, he set out in quest of the sources from which Leibniz had derived his system, Leibniz’s plan for a universal logic (mathesis universalis), his striving to solve mathematical as well as philosophical problems by finding new systems and new tools, as well as his theological thought-inspired and had great influence on Lambert’s ideas.

In this book, Lambert reveals his ideas about the structure and content of every philosophical work. The essence of his philosophical thought lies in the notions of ‘organon’ (a traditional epistemological and logical tool of scientific thought) and ‘architectonic’ (the new research system for establishment of metaphysical fundamental principles), which together constitute a tool-purpose entity. In terms of the universality and breadth of horizons of this theory, Lambert is far ahead of any other 18th century philosopher or scientist.

The organon comprises four distinct parts: (a) Dianoialogy-the set of rules according to which the paths towards truth can be

determined and traversed. (b) Alethiology-the general doctrine of truth, modeled on Leibniz’s universal logic. (c) Semiotics-the theory of designating thoughts and things, expected to provide an

answer to two cardinal questions: what kind of influence does language have on our knowledge of truth? and, how can language help us to achieve truthful knowledge?

(d) Phenomenology-the doctrine which enables us to recognize illusions and make our way through them towards truth.

Lambert’s organon is designed to bond together the elements of human knowledge and to apply it as necessary. Architectonic, the theory of primary, simple and fundamental concepts and axioms, becomes an ‘ontological lexicon’ which serves as basis for a general systematology.

The influence of the doctrine of architectonic on Kant’s phiIosophica1 thought is evident throughout The Critique of Pure Reason. H.J. Paton rightly remarked that ‘Kant’s love of architectonic is alleged to distort his thinking’ (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, 1936, v. 1, p. 235). Lambert’s philosophical and systematical thought, as one of the central streams of the German Enlightenment, should be studied not only as prelude to Kant, but as an independent philosophical system and theory of science.

Considered as a purely systematic work, without regard to its other considerable merits, this book is vital reading not only for scholars or students of German philosophy and history of the Enlightenment, but for anyone interested in the important theories of the history of ideas.

Tech&n-Israel Institute of Technology Israel Idalovichi