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The history of logic deals with the study of the development of the science of valid
inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...
(
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
). Formal logics developed in ancient times in
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, and
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
. Greek methods, particularly
Aristotelian logic In logic and formal semantics, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly b ...
(or term logic) as found in the ''
Organon The ''Organon'' (, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, who maintained against the ...
'', found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia.Boehner p. xiv The
Stoics Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient ...
, especially
Chrysippus Chrysippus of Soli (; , ; ) was a Ancient Greece, Greek Stoicism, Stoic Philosophy, philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. When Cleanthes ...
, began the development of
predicate logic First-order logic, also called predicate logic, predicate calculus, or quantificational logic, is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables ove ...
.
Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
and
Islamic Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
philosophers such as
Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...
(died 524),
Avicenna Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...
(died 1037),
Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...
(died 1274) and
William of Ockham William of Ockham or Occam ( ; ; 9/10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and theologian, who was born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medie ...
(died 1347) further developed Aristotle's logic in the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, reaching a high point in the mid-fourteenth century, with
Jean Buridan Jean Buridan (; ; Latin: ''Johannes Buridanus''; – ) was an influential 14thcentury French scholastic philosopher. Buridan taught in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris for his entire career and focused in particular on logic and ...
. The period between the fourteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw largely decline and neglect, and at least one historian of logic regards this time as barren.Oxford Companion p. 498; Bochenski, Part I Introduction, ''passim''
Empirical methods Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. It is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empiricism values some research more than other kinds. Empirical evidence (the record of o ...
ruled the day, as evidenced by Sir
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
's '' Novum Organon'' of 1620. Logic revived in the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginning of a revolutionary period when the subject developed into a rigorous and formal discipline which took as its exemplar the exact method of
proof Proof most often refers to: * Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition * Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength Proof may also refer to: Mathematics and formal logic * Formal proof, a co ...
used in
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
, a hearkening back to the Greek tradition. The development of the modern "symbolic" or "mathematical" logic during this period by the likes of
Boole George Boole ( ; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland. ...
, Frege, Russell, and Peano is the most significant in the two-thousand-year history of logic, and is arguably one of the most important and remarkable events in human
intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualization, conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of ...
.Oxford Companion p. 500 Progress in
mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...
in the first few decades of the twentieth century, particularly arising from the work of Gödel and Tarski, had a significant impact on
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a broad movement within Western philosophy, especially English-speaking world, anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis as a philosophical method; clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic, mat ...
and
philosophical logic Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophic ...
, particularly from the 1950s onwards, in subjects such as
modal logic Modal logic is a kind of logic used to represent statements about Modality (natural language), necessity and possibility. In philosophy and related fields it is used as a tool for understanding concepts such as knowledge, obligation, and causality ...
, temporal logic, deontic logic, and
relevance logic Relevance logic, also called relevant logic, is a kind of non-classical logic requiring the antecedent and consequent of implications to be relevantly related. They may be viewed as a family of substructural or modal logics. It is generally, b ...
.


Logic in India


Hindu logic


Origin

The Nasadiya Sukta of the ''
Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
'' ( RV 10.129) contains
ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...
speculation in terms of various logical divisions that were later recast formally as the four circles of '' catuskoti'': "A", "not A", "A and 'not A, and "not A and not not A". Logic began independently in
ancient India Anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentism, Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; ...
and continued to develop to early modern times without any known influence from Greek logic.


Before Gautama

Though the origins in India of public debate (''pariṣad''), one form of rational inquiry, are not clear, we know that public debates were common in preclassical India, for they are frequently alluded to in various '' Upaniṣads'' and in the early Buddhist literature. Public debate is not the only form of public deliberations in preclassical India. Assemblies (''pariṣad'' or '' sabhā'') of various sorts, comprising relevant experts, were regularly convened to deliberate on a variety of matters, including administrative, legal and religious matters.


Dattatreya

A philosopher named Dattatreya is stated in the
Bhagavata Purana The ''Bhagavata Purana'' (; ), also known as the ''Srimad Bhagavatam (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam)'', ''Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana'' () or simply ''Bhagavata (Bhāgavata)'', is one of Hinduism's eighteen major Puranas (''Mahapuranas'') and one ...
to have taught Anviksiki to Aiarka, Prahlada and others. It appears from the
Markandeya purana The ''Markandeya Purana'' (; IAST: ) is a Sanskrit text of Hinduism, and one of the eighteen major Puranas. The text's title Markandeya refers to a sage in Sanatana Dharma, who is the central character in two legends, one linked to Shiva and oth ...
that the Anviksiki-vidya expounded by him consisted of a mere disquisition on soul in accordance with the yoga philosophy. Dattatreya expounded the philosophical side of Anviksiki and not its logical aspect.


Medhatithi Gautama

While the teachers mentioned before dealt with some particular topics of Anviksiki, the credit of founding the Anviksiki in its special sense of a science is to be attributed to Medhatithi Gautama (c. 6th century BC). Guatama founded the '' anviksiki'' school of logic. The ''
Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
'' (12.173.45), around the 5th century BC, refers to the ''anviksiki'' and ''tarka'' schools of logic.


Panini

(c. 5th century BC) developed a form of logic (to which
Boolean logic In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variable (mathematics), variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denot ...
has some similarities) for his formulation of
Sanskrit grammar The grammar of the Sanskrit language has a complex verbal system, rich nominal declension, and extensive use of compound nouns. It was studied and codified by Sanskrit grammarians from the later Vedic period (roughly 8th century BCE), culminatin ...
. Logic is described by
Chanakya Chanakya (ISO 15919, ISO: ', चाणक्य, ), according to legendary narratives preserved in various traditions dating from the 4th to 11th century CE, was a Brahmin who assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya, Chandragup ...
(c. 350–283 BC) in his ''
Arthashastra ''Kautilya's Arthashastra'' (, ; ) is an Ancient Indian Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, politics, economic policy and military strategy. The text is likely the work of several authors over centuries, starting as a compilation of ''Arthashas ...
'' as an independent field of inquiry.


Nyaya-Vaisheshika

Two of the six Indian schools of thought deal with logic:
Nyaya Nyāya (Sanskrit: न्यायः, IAST: nyāyaḥ), literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment", is one of the six orthodox (Āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy. Nyāya's most significant contributions to Indian philosophy ...
and
Vaisheshika Vaisheshika (IAST: Vaiśeṣika; ; ) is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy from ancient India. In its early stages, Vaiśeṣika was an independent philosophy with its own metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and soteriology. Over t ...
. The
Nyāya Sūtras The ''Nyāya Sūtras'' is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text composed by , and the foundational text of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy. The date when the text was composed, and the biography of its author is unknown, but variously estim ...
of Aksapada Gautama (c. 2nd century AD) constitute the core texts of the Nyaya school, one of the six orthodox schools of
Hindu Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
philosophy. This realist school developed a rigid five-member schema of
inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...
involving an initial premise, a reason, an example, an application, and a conclusion. The
idealist Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entir ...
Buddhist philosophy Buddhist philosophy is the ancient Indian Indian philosophy, philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism. It comprises all the Philosophy, philosophical investigations and Buddhist logico-episte ...
became the chief opponent to the Naiyayikas.


Jain logic

Jains made its own unique contribution to this mainstream development of logic by also occupying itself with the basic epistemological issues, namely, with those concerning the nature of knowledge, how knowledge is derived, and in what way knowledge can be said to be reliable. The Jains have doctrines of relativity used for logic and reasoning: *
Anekāntavāda (, "many-sidedness") is the Jainism, Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects and viewpoints. According to Jainism, no single, spe ...
– the theory of relative pluralism or manifoldness; *
Syādvāda (, "many-sidedness") is the Jainism, Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects and viewpoints. According to Jainism, no single, spe ...
– the theory of conditioned predication and; * Nayavāda – The theory of partial standpoints. These concepts in
Jain philosophy Jain philosophy or Jaina philosophy refers to the Ancient India, ancient Indian Indian philosophy, philosophical system of the Jainism, Jain religion. It comprises all the Philosophy, philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that dev ...
made important contributions to the thought, especially in the areas of skepticism and relativity


Buddhist logic


Nagarjuna

Nagarjuna Nāgārjuna (Sanskrit: नागार्जुन, ''Nāgārjuna''; ) was an Indian monk and Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhist Philosophy, philosopher of the Madhyamaka (Centrism, Middle Way) school. He is widely considered one of the most importa ...
(c. 150–250 AD), the founder of the
Madhyamaka Madhyamaka ("middle way" or "centrism"; ; ; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: དབུ་མ་པ་ ; ''dbu ma pa''), otherwise known as Śūnyavāda ("the Śūnyatā, emptiness doctrine") and Niḥsvabhāvavāda ("the no Svabhava, ''svabhāva'' d ...
("Middle Way") developed an analysis known as the catuṣkoṭi (Sanskrit), a "four-cornered" system of argumentation that involves the systematic examination and rejection of each of the four possibilities of a proposition, ''P'': # ''P''; that is, being. # not ''P''; that is, not being. # ''P'' and not ''P''; that is, being and not being. # not (''P'' or not ''P''); that is, neither being nor not being.Under
propositional logic The propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. Sometimes, it is called ''first-order'' propositional logic to contra ...
,
De Morgan's laws In propositional calculus, propositional logic and Boolean algebra, De Morgan's laws, also known as De Morgan's theorem, are a pair of transformation rules that are both Validity (logic), valid rule of inference, rules of inference. They are nam ...
would imply that the fourth case is equivalent to the third case, and would be therefore superfluous, with only 3 actual cases to consider.


Dignaga

However,
Dignāga Dignāga (also known as ''Diṅnāga'', ) was an Indian Buddhist philosopher and logician. He is credited as one of the Buddhism, Buddhist founders of Indian logic (''hetu vidyā'') and Buddhist atomism, atomism. Dignāga's work laid the grou ...
(c 480–540 AD) is sometimes said to have developed a formal syllogism, and it was through him and his successor,
Dharmakirti Dharmakīrti (fl. ;), was an influential Indian Buddhist philosopher who worked at Nālandā.Tom Tillemans (2011)Dharmakirti Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy He was one of the key scholars of epistemology ( pramāṇa) in Buddhist philo ...
, that
Buddhist logic Buddhist logico-epistemology is a term used in Western scholarship to describe Buddhism, Buddhist systems of ' (Epistemology, epistemic tool, valid cognition) and ' (reasoning, logic). While the term may refer to various Buddhist systems and vi ...
reached its height; it is contested whether their analysis actually constitutes a formal syllogistic system. In particular, their analysis centered on the definition of an inference-warranting relation, " vyapti", also known as invariable concomitance or pervasion. To this end, a doctrine known as "apoha" or differentiation was developed. This involved what might be called inclusion and exclusion of defining properties. Dignāga's famous "wheel of reason" ('' Hetucakra'') is a method of indicating when one thing (such as smoke) can be taken as an invariable sign of another thing (like fire), but the inference is often inductive and based on past observation. Matilal remarks that Dignāga's analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive.


Logic in China

In China, a contemporary of
Confucius Confucius (; pinyin: ; ; ), born Kong Qiu (), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the phil ...
,
Mozi Mozi, personal name Mo Di, was a Chinese philosopher, logician, and founder of the Mohist school of thought, making him one of the most important figures of the Warring States period (221 BCE). Alongside Confucianism, Mohism became the ...
, "Master Mo", is credited with founding the Mohist school, whose canons dealt with issues relating to valid inference and the conditions of correct conclusions. In particular, one of the schools that grew out of Mohism, the
Logicians Logic is the study of correct Logical reasoning, reasoning. It includes both Logic#Formal logic, formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of Validity (logic), deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclu ...
, are credited by some scholars for their early investigation of
formal logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
. Due to the harsh rule of Legalism in the subsequent
Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...
, this line of investigation disappeared in China until the introduction of Indian philosophy by
Buddhists Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or 5th century BCE. It is the world's fourth ...
.


Logic in the ancient Mediterranean


Prehistory of logic

Valid reasoning has been employed in all periods of human history. However, logic studies the ''principles'' of valid reasoning, inference and demonstration. It is probable that the idea of demonstrating a conclusion first arose in connection with
geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...
, which originally meant the same as "land measurement". The
ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...
ians discovered
geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...
, including the formula for the volume of a truncated pyramid.Kneale p. 3 Ancient Babylon was also skilled in mathematics. Esagil-kin-apli's medical ''Diagnostic Handbook'' in the 11th century BC was based on a logical set of
axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...
s and assumptions,H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, Marten Stol, Cornelis Tilburg (2004), ''Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine'', p. 99,
Brill Publishers Brill Academic Publishers () is a Dutch international academic publisher of books, academic journals, and Bibliographic database, databases founded in 1683, making it one of the oldest publishing houses in the Netherlands. Founded in the South ...
, .
while Babylonian astronomers in the 8th and 7th centuries BC employed an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems, an important contribution to the
philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...
.D. Brown (2000), ''Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology '', Styx Publications, .


Ancient Greece before Aristotle

While the ancient Egyptians empirically discovered some truths of geometry, the great achievement of the ancient Greeks was to replace empirical methods by demonstrative
proof Proof most often refers to: * Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition * Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength Proof may also refer to: Mathematics and formal logic * Formal proof, a co ...
. Both
Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Philosophy, philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Seven Sages, founding figure ...
and
Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos (;  BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of P ...
of the Pre-Socratic philosophers seemed aware of geometric methods. Fragments of early proofs are preserved in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and the idea of a deductive system was probably known in the Pythagorean school and the
Platonic Academy The Academy (), variously known as Plato's Academy, or the Platonic Academy, was founded in Classical Athens, Athens by Plato ''wikt:circa, circa'' 387 BC. The academy is regarded as the first institution of higher education in the west, where ...
. The proofs of Euclid of Alexandria are a paradigm of Greek geometry. The three basic principles of geometry are as follows: * Certain propositions must be accepted as true without demonstration; such a proposition is known as an
axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...
of geometry. * Every proposition that is not an axiom of geometry must be demonstrated as following from the axioms of geometry; such a demonstration is known as a
proof Proof most often refers to: * Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition * Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength Proof may also refer to: Mathematics and formal logic * Formal proof, a co ...
or a "derivation" of the proposition. * The proof must be ''formal''; that is, the derivation of the proposition must be independent of the particular subject matter in question. Further evidence that early Greek thinkers were concerned with the principles of reasoning is found in the fragment called '' dissoi logoi'', probably written at the beginning of the fourth century BC. This is part of a protracted debate about truth and falsity. In the case of the classical Greek city-states, interest in argumentation was also stimulated by the activities of the
Rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
ians or Orators and the
Sophists A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellen ...
, who used arguments to defend or attack a thesis, both in legal and political contexts.


Thales

It is said Thales, most widely regarded as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, measured the height of the
pyramids A pyramid () is a Nonbuilding structure, structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a Pyramid (geometry), pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid ca ...
by their shadows at the moment when his own shadow was equal to his height. Thales was said to have had a sacrifice in celebration of discovering
Thales' theorem In geometry, Thales's theorem states that if , , and are distinct points on a circle where the line is a diameter, the angle is a right angle. Thales's theorem is a special case of the inscribed angle theorem and is mentioned and proved as pa ...
just as Pythagoras had the
Pythagorean theorem In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite t ...
. Thales is the first known individual to use
deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is the process of drawing valid inferences. An inference is valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, meaning that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. For example, t ...
applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to his theorem, and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. Indian and Babylonian mathematicians knew his theorem for special cases before he proved it. It is believed that Thales learned that an angle inscribed in a
semicircle In mathematics (and more specifically geometry), a semicircle is a one-dimensional locus of points that forms half of a circle. It is a circular arc that measures 180° (equivalently, radians, or a half-turn). It only has one line of symmetr ...
is a right angle during his travels to
Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...
.


Pythagoras

Before 520 BC, on one of his visits to Egypt or Greece, Pythagoras might have met the c. 54 years older Thales. The systematic study of proof seems to have begun with the school of Pythagoras (i. e. the Pythagoreans) in the late sixth century BC. Indeed, the Pythagoreans, believing all was number, are the first philosophers to emphasize ''form'' rather than ''matter''.


Heraclitus and Parmenides

The writing of
Heraclitus Heraclitus (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, ...
(c. 535 – c. 475 BC) was the first place where the word ''
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'' was given special attention in ancient Greek philosophy, Heraclitus held that everything changes and all was fire and conflicting opposites, seemingly unified only by this ''Logos''. He is known for his obscure sayings. In contrast to Heraclitus,
Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; ; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic ancient Greece, Greek philosopher from Velia, Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Veli ...
held that all is one and nothing changes. He may have been a dissident Pythagorean, disagreeing that One (a number) produced the many. "X is not" must always be false or meaningless. What exists can in no way not exist. Our sense perceptions with its noticing of generation and destruction are in grievous error. Instead of sense perception, Parmenides advocated ''logos'' as the means to Truth. He has been called the discoverer of logic,
Zeno of Elea Zeno of Elea (; ; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea, in Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). He was a student of Parmenides and one of the Eleatics. Zeno defended his instructor's belief in monism, the idea that only one single en ...
, a pupil of Parmenides, had the idea of a standard argument pattern found in the method of proof known as ''
reductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical argument'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absur ...
''. This is the technique of drawing an obviously false (that is, "absurd") conclusion from an assumption, thus demonstrating that the assumption is false. Therefore, Zeno and his teacher are seen as the first to apply the art of logic. Plato's dialogue
Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; ; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic ancient Greece, Greek philosopher from Velia, Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Veli ...
portrays Zeno as claiming to have written a book defending the
monism Monism attributes oneness or singleness () to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonis ...
of Parmenides by demonstrating the absurd consequence of assuming that there is plurality. Zeno famously used this method to develop his
paradoxes A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictor ...
in his arguments against motion. Such ''dialectic'' reasoning later became popular. The members of this school were called "dialecticians" (from a Greek word meaning "to discuss").


Plato

None of the surviving works of the great fourth-century philosopher
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
(428–347 BC) include any formal logic, but they include important contributions to the field of
philosophical logic Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophic ...
. Plato raises three questions: * What is it that can properly be called true or false? * What is the nature of the connection between the assumptions of a valid argument and its conclusion? * What is the nature of definition? The first question arises in the dialogue '' Theaetetus'', where Plato identifies thought or opinion with talk or discourse (''logos''). The second question is a result of Plato's
theory of Forms The Theory of Forms or Theory of Ideas, also known as Platonic idealism or Platonic realism, is a philosophical theory credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical w ...
. Forms are not things in the ordinary sense, nor strictly ideas in the mind, but they correspond to what philosophers later called universals, namely an abstract entity common to each set of things that have the same name. In both the ''
Republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...
'' and the ''
Sophist A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellen ...
'', Plato suggests that the necessary connection between the assumptions of a valid argument and its conclusion corresponds to a necessary connection between "forms". The third question is about
definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...
. Many of Plato's dialogues concern the search for a definition of some important concept (justice, truth, the Good), and it is likely that Plato was impressed by the importance of definition in mathematics. What underlies every definition is a Platonic Form, the common nature present in different particular things. Thus, a definition reflects the ultimate object of understanding, and is the foundation of all valid inference. This had a great influence on Plato's student
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
, in particular Aristotle's notion of the
essence Essence () has various meanings and uses for different thinkers and in different contexts. It is used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property (philosophy), property or set of properties or attributes that make an entity the ...
of a thing.


Aristotle

The logic of
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
, and particularly his theory of the
syllogism A syllogism (, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. In its earliest form (defin ...
, has had an enormous influence in
Western thought Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. ...
. Aristotle was the first logician to attempt a systematic analysis of logical syntax, of noun (or '' term''), and of verb. He was the first ''formal logician'', in that he demonstrated the principles of reasoning by employing variables to show the underlying
logical form In logic, the logical form of a statement is a precisely specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unamb ...
of an argument. He sought relations of dependence which characterize necessary inference, and distinguished the validity of these relations, from the truth of the premises. He was the first to deal with the principles of
contradiction In traditional logic, a contradiction involves a proposition conflicting either with itself or established fact. It is often used as a tool to detect disingenuous beliefs and bias. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle's ...
and excluded middle in a systematic way.Bochenski p. 63


The Organon

His logical works, called the ''
Organon The ''Organon'' (, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, who maintained against the ...
'', are the earliest formal study of logic that have come down to modern times. Though it is difficult to determine the dates, the probable order of writing of Aristotle's logical works is: * '' The Categories'', a study of the ten kinds of primitive term. * '' The Topics'' (with an appendix called ''
On Sophistical Refutations ''Sophistical Refutations'' (; ) is a text in Aristotle's ''Organon'' in which he identified thirteen Fallacy, fallacies.Sometimes listed as twelve. According to Aristotle, this is the first work to treat the subject of deductive reasoning in anc ...
''), a discussion of dialectics. * ''
On Interpretation ''On Interpretation'' (Ancient Greek, Greek: , ) is the second text from Aristotle's ''Organon'' and is among the earliest surviving philosophical works in the Western philosophy, Western tradition to deal with the relationship between language an ...
'', an analysis of simple
categorical proposition In logic, a categorical proposition, or categorical statement, is a proposition that asserts or denies that all or some of the members of one category (the ''subject term'') are included in another (the ''predicate term''). The study of arguments ...
s into simple terms, negation, and signs of quantity. * '' The Prior Analytics'', a formal analysis of what makes a
syllogism A syllogism (, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. In its earliest form (defin ...
(a valid argument, according to Aristotle). * '' The Posterior Analytics'', a study of scientific demonstration, containing Aristotle's mature views on logic. These works are of outstanding importance in the history of logic. In the ''Categories'', he attempts to discern all the possible things to which a term can refer; this idea underpins his philosophical work ''
Metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
'', which itself had a profound influence on Western thought. He also developed a theory of non-formal logic (''i.e.,'' the theory of
fallacies A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophis ...
), which is presented in ''Topics'' and ''Sophistical Refutations''. ''On Interpretation'' contains a comprehensive treatment of the notions of opposition and conversion; chapter 7 is at the origin of the
square of opposition In term logic (a branch of philosophical logic), the square of opposition is a diagram representing the relations between the four basic categorical propositions. The origin of the square can be traced back to Aristotle's tractate '' On Int ...
(or logical square); chapter 9 contains the beginning of
modal logic Modal logic is a kind of logic used to represent statements about Modality (natural language), necessity and possibility. In philosophy and related fields it is used as a tool for understanding concepts such as knowledge, obligation, and causality ...
. The ''Prior Analytics'' contains his exposition of the "syllogism", where three important principles are applied for the first time in history: the use of variables, a purely formal treatment, and the use of an axiomatic system.


Stoics

The other great school of Greek logic is that of the
Stoics Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient ...
. Stoic logic traces its roots back to the late 5th century BC philosopher Euclid of Megara, a pupil of
Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
and slightly older contemporary of Plato, probably following in the tradition of Parmenides and Zeno. His pupils and successors were called "
Megarians Megara (; , ) is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Meg ...
", or "Eristics", and later the "Dialecticians". The two most important dialecticians of the Megarian school were Diodorus Cronus and
Philo Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...
, who were active in the late 4th century BC. The Stoics adopted the Megarian logic and systemized it. The most important member of the school was
Chrysippus Chrysippus of Soli (; , ; ) was a Ancient Greece, Greek Stoicism, Stoic Philosophy, philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. When Cleanthes ...
(c. 278 – c. 206 BC), who was its third head, and who formalized much of Stoic doctrine. He is supposed to have written over 700 works, including at least 300 on logic, almost none of which survive. Unlike with Aristotle, we have no complete works by the Megarians or the early Stoics, and have to rely mostly on accounts (sometimes hostile) by later sources, including prominently
Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...
,
Sextus Empiricus Sextus Empiricus (, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician with Roman citizenship. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the argument ...
,
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
,
Aulus Gellius Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his ''Attic Nights'', a commonplace book, ...
,
Alexander of Aphrodisias Alexander of Aphrodisias (; AD) was a Peripatetic school, Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle, commentators on the writings of Aristotle. He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria and liv ...
, and
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
. Three significant contributions of the Stoic school were (i) their account of
modality Modality may refer to: Humanities * Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations * Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales * Modalit ...
, (ii) their theory of the
Material conditional The material conditional (also known as material implication) is a binary operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \to is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \to Q is true unless P is true and Q is false. M ...
, and (iii) their account of meaning and
truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...
. * ''Modality''. According to Aristotle, the Megarians of his day claimed there was no distinction between
potentiality and actuality In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his ''Physics'', ''Metaphysics'', '' Nicomachean Ethics'', and '' De Anima''. Th ...
. Diodorus Cronus defined the possible as that which either is or will be, the impossible as what will not be true, and the contingent as that which either is already, or will be false. Diodorus is also famous for what is known as his Master argument, which states that each pair of the following 3 propositions contradicts the third proposition: :* Everything that is past is true and necessary. :* The impossible does not follow from the possible. :* What neither is nor will be is possible. : Diodorus used the plausibility of the first two to prove that nothing is possible if it neither is nor will be true. Chrysippus, by contrast, denied the second premise and said that the impossible could follow from the possible. * ''Conditional statements''. The first logicians to debate conditional statements were Diodorus and his pupil Philo of Megara. Sextus Empiricus refers three times to a debate between Diodorus and Philo. Philo regarded a conditional as true unless it has both a true antecedent and a false consequent. Precisely, let ''T0'' and ''T1'' be true statements, and let ''F0'' and ''F1'' be false statements; then, according to Philo, each of the following conditionals is a true statement, because it is not the case that the consequent is false while the antecedent is true (it is not the case that a false statement is asserted to follow from a true statement): :* If ''T0'', then ''T1'' :* If ''F0'', then ''T0'' :* If ''F0'', then ''F1'' : The following conditional does not meet this requirement, and is therefore a false statement according to Philo: :* If ''T0'', then ''F0'' : Indeed, Sextus says "According to [Philo], there are three ways in which a conditional may be true, and one in which it may be false."Sextus Empiricus, ''Adv. Math.'' viii, Section 113 Philo's criterion of truth is what would now be called a truth-functional definition of "if ... then"; it is the definition used in modern logic. :In contrast, Diodorus allowed the validity of conditionals only when the antecedent clause could never lead to an untrue conclusion. * ''Meaning and truth''. The most important and striking difference between Megarian-Stoic logic and Aristotelian logic is that Megarian-Stoic logic concerns propositions, not terms, and is thus closer to modern
propositional logic The propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. Sometimes, it is called ''first-order'' propositional logic to contra ...
. The Stoics distinguished between utterance (''phone''), which may be noise, speech (''lexis''), which is articulate but which may be meaningless, and discourse (''logos''), which is meaningful utterance. The most original part of their theory is the idea that what is expressed by a sentence, called a ''lekton'', is something real; this corresponds to what is now called a ''proposition''. Sextus says that according to the Stoics, three things are linked together: that which signifies, that which is signified, and the object; for example, that which signifies is the word ''Dion'', and that which is signified is what Greeks understand but barbarians do not, and the object is Dion himself.


Medieval logic


Logic in the Middle East

The works of Al-Kindi,
Al-Farabi file:A21-133 grande.webp, thumbnail, 200px, Postage stamp of the USSR, issued on the 1100th anniversary of the birth of Al-Farabi (1975) Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (; – 14 December 950–12 January 951), known in the Greek East and Latin West ...
,
Avicenna Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...
,
Al-Ghazali Al-Ghazali ( – 19 December 1111), archaically Latinized as Algazelus, was a Shafi'i Sunni Muslim scholar and polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theoreticians, muftis, philosophers, the ...
,
Averroes Ibn Rushd (14 April 112611 December 1198), archaically Latinization of names, Latinized as Averroes, was an Arab Muslim polymath and Faqīh, jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astron ...
and other Muslim logicians were based on Aristotelian logic and were important in communicating the ideas of the ancient world to the medieval West.
Al-Farabi file:A21-133 grande.webp, thumbnail, 200px, Postage stamp of the USSR, issued on the 1100th anniversary of the birth of Al-Farabi (1975) Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (; – 14 December 950–12 January 951), known in the Greek East and Latin West ...
(Alfarabi) (873–950) was an Aristotelian logician who discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
and
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
, and non-Aristotelian forms of
inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...
. Al-Farabi also considered the theories of conditional syllogisms and analogical inference, which were part of the Stoic tradition of logic rather than the Aristotelian.
Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...
(1138-1204) wrote a ''Treatise on Logic'' (Arabic: ''Maqala Fi-Sinat Al-Mantiq''), referring to Al-Farabi as the "second master", the first being Aristotle.
Ibn Sina Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...
(Avicenna) (980–1037) was the founder of Avicennian logic, which replaced Aristotelian logic as the dominant system of logic in the Islamic world, and also had an important influence on Western medieval writers such as
Albertus Magnus Albertus Magnus ( 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great, Albert of Swabia, Albert von Bollstadt, or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop, considered one of the great ...
. Avicenna wrote on the hypothetical syllogism and on the
propositional calculus The propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. Sometimes, it is called ''first-order'' propositional logic to contra ...
, which were both part of the Stoic logical tradition. He developed an original "temporally modalized" syllogistic theory, involving temporal logic and
modal logic Modal logic is a kind of logic used to represent statements about Modality (natural language), necessity and possibility. In philosophy and related fields it is used as a tool for understanding concepts such as knowledge, obligation, and causality ...
.History of logic: Arabic logic
''
Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...
''.
He also made use of inductive logic, such as the methods of agreement, difference, and concomitant variation which are critical to the
scientific method The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and ...
.Goodman, Lenn Evan (2003), ''Islamic Humanism'', p. 155,
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, .
One of Avicenna's ideas had a particularly important influence on Western logicians such as
William of Ockham William of Ockham or Occam ( ; ; 9/10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and theologian, who was born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medie ...
: Avicenna's word for a meaning or notion (''ma'na''), was translated by the scholastic logicians as the Latin ''intentio''; in medieval logic and
epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...
, this is a sign in the mind that naturally represents a thing. This was crucial to the development of Ockham's conceptualism: A universal term (''e.g.,'' "man") does not signify a thing existing in reality, but rather a sign in the mind (''intentio in intellectu'') which represents many things in reality; Ockham cites Avicenna's commentary on ''Metaphysics'' V in support of this view. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (b. 1149) criticised Aristotle's " first figure" and formulated an early system of inductive logic, foreshadowing the system of inductive logic developed by
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...
(1806–1873).
Muhammad Iqbal Muhammad Iqbal (9 November 187721 April 1938) was a South Asian Islamic philosopher, poet and politician. Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...
, '' The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam'', "The Spirit of Muslim Culture" (
cf. The abbreviation cf. (short for either Latin or , both meaning 'compare') is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. However some sources offer differing or even contr ...
br>
an

Al-Razi's work was seen by later Islamic scholars as marking a new direction for Islamic logic, towards a Logic in Islamic philosophy#Post-Avicennian logic, Post-Avicennian logic. This was further elaborated by his student Afdaladdîn al-Khûnajî (d. 1249), who developed a form of logic revolving around the subject matter of
concept A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, ...
ions and assents. In response to this tradition,
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (1201 – 1274), also known as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (; ) or simply as (al-)Tusi, was a Persians, Persian polymath, architect, Early Islamic philosophy, philosopher, Islamic medicine, phy ...
(1201–1274) began a tradition of Neo-Avicennian logic which remained faithful to Avicenna's work and existed as an alternative to the more dominant Post-Avicennian school over the following centuries. The Illuminationist school was founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155–1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", which refers to the reduction of all modalities (necessity, possibility, contingency and impossibility) to the single mode of necessity. Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) wrote a book on Avicennian logic, which was a commentary of Avicenna's ''Al-Isharat'' (''The Signs'') and ''Al-Hidayah'' (''The Guidance'').Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn Al-Nafis as a philosopher", ''Symposium on Ibn al-Nafis'', Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait (
cf. The abbreviation cf. (short for either Latin or , both meaning 'compare') is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. However some sources offer differing or even contr ...
br>Ibn al-Nafis As a Philosopher
, ''Encyclopedia of Islamic World'').
Ibn Taymiyyah Ibn Taymiyya (; 22 January 1263 – 26 September 1328)Ibn Taymiyya, Taqi al-Din Ahmad, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195125580.001.0001/acref-9780195125580-e-959 was a Sunni Muslim ulama, ...
(1263–1328), wrote the ''Ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin'', where he argued against the usefulness, though not the validity, of the
syllogism A syllogism (, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. In its earliest form (defin ...
and in favour of
inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning refers to a variety of method of reasoning, methods of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument is supported not with deductive certainty, but with some degree of probability. Unlike Deductive reasoning, ''deductive'' ...
. Ibn Taymiyyah also argued against the certainty of syllogism, syllogistic arguments and in favour of analogy; his argument is that concepts founded on inductive reasoning, induction are themselves not certain but only probable, and thus a syllogism based on such concepts is no more certain than an argument based on analogy. He further claimed that induction itself is founded on a process of analogy. His model of analogical reasoning was based on that of juridical arguments., pp. 16–36 This model of analogy has been used in the recent work of John F. Sowa. The ''Sharh al-takmil fi'l-mantiq'' written by Muhammad ibn Fayd Allah ibn Muhammad Amin al-Sharwani in the 15th century is the last major Arabic work on logic that has been studied. However, "thousands upon thousands of pages" on logic were written between the 14th and 19th centuries, though only a fraction of the texts written during this period have been studied by historians, hence little is known about the original work on Islamic logic produced during this later period.


Logic in medieval Europe

"Medieval logic" (also known as "Scholastic logic") generally means the form of Aristotelian logic developed in Middle Ages, medieval Europe throughout roughly the period 1200–1600. For centuries after Stoic logic had been formulated, it was the dominant system of logic in the classical world. When the study of logic resumed after the Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages, the main source was the work of the Christian philosopher
Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...
, who was familiar with some of Aristotle's logic, but almost none of the work of the Stoics.Kneale p. 198 Until the twelfth century, the only works of Aristotle available in the West were the ''Categories'', ''On Interpretation'', and Boethius's translation of the Isagoge of Porphyry (philosopher), Porphyry (a commentary on the Categories). These works were known as the "Old Logic" (''Logica Vetus'' or ''Ars Vetus''). An important work in this tradition was the ''Logica Ingredientibus'' of Peter Abelard (1079–1142). His direct influence was small, but his influence through pupils such as John of Salisbury was great, and his method of applying rigorous logical analysis to theology shaped the way that theological criticism developed in the period that followed. The proof for the principle of explosion, also known as the principle of Pseudo-Scotus, the law according to which any proposition can be proven from a contradiction (including its negation), was first given by the 12th century French logician William of Soissons. By the early thirteenth century, the remaining works of Aristotle's ''Organon'', including the ''Prior Analytics'', ''Posterior Analytics'', and the ''Sophistical Refutations'' (collectively known as the ''Logica Nova'' or "New Logic"), had been recovered in the West. Logical work until then was mostly paraphrasis or commentary on the work of Aristotle. The period from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century was one of significant developments in logic, particularly in three areas which were original, with little foundation in the Aristotelian tradition that came before. These were: * The theory of Supposition theory, supposition. Supposition theory deals with the way that predicates (''e.g.,'' 'man') range over a domain of individuals (''e.g.,'' all men). In the proposition 'every man is an animal', does the term 'man' range over or 'supposit for' men existing just in the present, or does the range include past and future men? Can a term supposit for a non-existing individual? Some medievalists have argued that this idea is a precursor of modern first-order logic. "The theory of supposition with the associated theories of ''copulatio'' (sign-capacity of adjectival terms), ''ampliatio'' (widening of referential domain), and ''distributio'' constitute one of the most original achievements of Western medieval logic". * The theory of Syncategorematic term, syncategoremata. Syncategoremata are terms which are necessary for logic, but which, unlike ''categorematic'' terms, do not signify on their own behalf, but 'co-signify' with other words. Examples of syncategoremata are 'and', 'not', 'every', 'if', and so on. * The theory of Logical consequence, consequences. A consequence is a hypothetical, conditional proposition: two propositions joined by the terms 'if ... then'. For example, 'if a man runs, then God exists' (''Si homo currit, Deus est''). A fully developed theory of consequences is given in Book III of
William of Ockham William of Ockham or Occam ( ; ; 9/10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and theologian, who was born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medie ...
's work Summa Logicae. There, Ockham distinguishes between 'material' and 'formal' consequences, which are roughly equivalent to the modern Material conditional, material implication and logical implication respectively. Similar accounts are given by
Jean Buridan Jean Buridan (; ; Latin: ''Johannes Buridanus''; – ) was an influential 14thcentury French scholastic philosopher. Buridan taught in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris for his entire career and focused in particular on logic and ...
and Albert of Saxony (philosopher), Albert of Saxony. The last great works in this tradition are the ''Logic'' of John Poinsot (1589–1644, known as John of St Thomas), the ''Metaphysical Disputations'' of Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), and the ''Logica Demonstrativa'' of Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri (1667–1733).


Traditional logic


The textbook tradition

''Traditional logic'' generally means the textbook tradition that begins with Antoine Arnauld's and Pierre Nicole's ''Logic, or the Art of Thinking'', better known as the ''Port-Royal Logic''. Published in 1662, it was the most influential work on logic after Aristotle until the nineteenth century.Buroker xxiii The book presents a loosely Cartesian doctrine (that the proposition is a combining of ideas rather than terms, for example) within a framework that is broadly derived from Aristotelian and medieval term logic. Between 1664 and 1700, there were eight editions, and the book had considerable influence after that. The Port-Royal introduces the concepts of extension (semantics), extension and intension. The account of propositions that John Locke, Locke gives in the ''Essay'' is essentially that of the Port-Royal: "Verbal propositions, which are words, [are] the signs of our ideas, put together or separated in affirmative or negative sentences. So that proposition consists in the putting together or separating these signs, according as the things which they stand for agree or disagree." Dudley Fenner helped popularize Ramist logic, a reaction against Aristotle. Another influential work was the ''Novum Organum'' by
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
, published in 1620. The title translates as "new instrument". This is a reference to
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
's work known as the ''
Organon The ''Organon'' (, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, who maintained against the ...
''. In this work, Bacon rejects the syllogistic method of Aristotle in favor of an alternative procedure "which by slow and faithful toil gathers information from things and brings it into understanding". This method is known as
inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning refers to a variety of method of reasoning, methods of reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument is supported not with deductive certainty, but with some degree of probability. Unlike Deductive reasoning, ''deductive'' ...
, a method which starts from empirical observation and proceeds to lower axioms or propositions; from these lower axioms, more general ones can be induced. For example, in finding the cause of a ''phenomenal nature'' such as heat, three lists should be constructed: * The presence list: a list of every situation where heat is found. * The absence list: a list of every situation that is similar to at least one of those of the presence list, except for the lack of heat. * The variability list: a list of every situation where heat can vary. Then, the ''form nature'' (or cause) of heat may be defined as that which is common to every situation of the presence list, and which is lacking from every situation of the absence list, and which varies by degree in every situation of the variability list. Other works in the textbook tradition include Isaac Watts's ''Logick: Or, the Right Use of Reason'' (1725), Richard Whately's ''Logic'' (1826), and
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...
's ''A System of Logic'' (1843). Although the latter was one of the last great works in the tradition, Mill's view that the foundations of logic lie in introspection influenced the view that logic is best understood as a branch of psychology, a view which dominated the next fifty years of its development, especially in Germany.


Logic in Hegel's philosophy

G.W.F. Hegel indicated the importance of logic to his philosophical system when he condensed his extensive ''Science of Logic'' into a shorter work published in 1817 as the first volume of his ''Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.'' The "Shorter" or "Encyclopaedia" ''Logic'', as it is often known, lays out a series of transitions which leads from the most empty and abstract of categories—Hegel begins with "Pure Being" and "Pure Nothing"—to the "Absolute (philosophy), Absolute", the category which contains and resolves all the categories which preceded it. Despite the title, Hegel's ''Logic'' is not really a contribution to the science of valid inference. Rather than deriving conclusions about concepts through valid inference from premises, Hegel seeks to show that thinking about one concept compels thinking about another concept (one cannot, he argues, possess the concept of "Quality" without the concept of "Quantity"); this compulsion is, supposedly, not a matter of individual psychology, because it arises almost organically from the content of the concepts themselves. His purpose is to show the rational structure of the "Absolute"—indeed of rationality itself. The method by which thought is driven from one concept to its contrary, and then to further concepts, is known as the Hegelian dialectic. Although Hegel's ''Logic'' has had little impact on mainstream logical studies, its influence can be seen elsewhere: * Carl von Prantl's ''Geschichte der Logik im Abendland'' (1855–1867). * The work of the British Idealism, British Idealists, such as F. H. Bradley's ''Principles of Logic'' (1883). * The economic, political, and philosophical studies of Karl Marx, and in the various schools of Marxism.


Logic and psychology

Between the work of Mill and Frege stretched half a century during which logic was widely treated as a descriptive science, an empirical study of the structure of reasoning, and thus essentially as a branch of psychology. The German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, for example, discussed deriving "the logical from the psychological laws of thought", emphasizing that "psychological thinking is always the more comprehensive form of thinking." This view was widespread among German philosophers of the period: * Theodor Lipps described logic as "a specific discipline of psychology". * Christoph von Sigwart understood logical necessity as grounded in the individual's compulsion to think in a certain way. * Benno Erdmann argued that "logical laws only hold within the limits of our thinking". Such was the dominant view of logic in the years following Mill's work. This psychological approach to logic was rejected by Gottlob Frege. It was also subjected to an extended and destructive critique by Edmund Husserl in the first volume of his ''Logical Investigations'' (1900), an assault which has been described as "overwhelming". Husserl argued forcefully that grounding logic in psychological observations implied that all logical truths remained unproven, and that skepticism and relativism were unavoidable consequences. Such criticisms did not immediately extirpate what is called "psychologism". For example, the American philosopher Josiah Royce, while acknowledging the force of Husserl's critique, remained "unable to doubt" that progress in psychology would be accompanied by progress in logic, and vice versa.


Rise of modern logic

The period between the fourteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century had been largely one of decline and neglect, and is generally regarded as barren by historians of logic. The revival of logic occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginning of a revolutionary period where the subject developed into a rigorous and formalistic discipline whose exemplar was the exact method of proof used in
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
. The development of the modern "symbolic" or "mathematical" logic during this period is the most significant in the 2000-year history of logic, and is arguably one of the most important and remarkable events in human intellectual history. A number of features distinguish modern logic from the old Aristotelian or traditional logic, the most important of which are as follows: Modern logic is fundamentally a ''calculus'' whose rules of operation are determined only by the ''shape'' and not by the ''meaning'' of the symbols it employs, as in mathematics. Many logicians were impressed by the "success" of mathematics, in that there had been no prolonged dispute about any truly mathematical result. Charles Sanders Peirce, C. S. Peirce noted that even though a mistake in the evaluation of a definite integral by Laplace led to an error concerning the moon's orbit that persisted for nearly 50 years, the mistake, once spotted, was corrected without any serious dispute. Peirce contrasted this with the disputation and uncertainty surrounding traditional logic, and especially reasoning in metaphysics. He argued that a truly "exact" logic would depend upon mathematical, i.e., "diagrammatic" or "iconic" thought. "Those who follow such methods will ... escape all error except such as will be speedily corrected after it is once suspected". Modern logic is also "constructive" rather than "abstractive"; i.e., rather than abstracting and formalising theorems derived from ordinary language (or from psychological intuitions about validity), it constructs theorems by formal methods, then looks for an interpretation in ordinary language. It is entirely symbolic, meaning that even the logical constants (which the medieval logicians called "Syncategorematic term, syncategoremata") and the categoric terms are expressed in symbols.


Modern logic

The development of modern logic falls into roughly five periods: * The ''embryonic period'' from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz to 1847, when the notion of a logical calculus was discussed and developed, particularly by Leibniz, but no schools were formed, and isolated periodic attempts were abandoned or went unnoticed. * The ''algebraic period'' from Boole's Analysis to Ernst Schröder (mathematician), Schröder's ''Vorlesungen''. In this period, there were more practitioners, and a greater continuity of development. * The ''logicist period'' from the Begriffsschrift of Frege to the ''Principia Mathematica'' of Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Whitehead. The aim of the "logicist school" was to incorporate the logic of all mathematical and scientific discourse in a single unified system which, taking as a fundamental principle that all mathematical truths are logical, did not accept any non-logical terminology. The major logicists were Frege, Russell, and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein. It culminates with the ''Principia'', an important work which includes a thorough examination and attempted solution of the antinomy, antinomies which had been an obstacle to earlier progress. * The ''metamathematical period'' from 1910 to the 1930s, which saw the development of metalogic, in the finitist system of David Hilbert, Hilbert, and the non-finitist system of Leopold Löwenheim, Löwenheim and Skolem, the combination of logic and metalogic in the work of Gödel and Tarski. Gödel's incompleteness theorem of 1931 was one of the greatest achievements in the history of logic. Later in the 1930s, Gödel developed the notion of set-theoretic constructibility. * The ''period after World War II'', when
mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...
branched into four inter-related but separate areas of research: model theory, proof theory, computability theory, and set theory, and its ideas and methods began to influence philosophy.


Embryonic period

The idea that inference could be represented by a purely mechanical process is found as early as Ramon Llull, Raymond Llull, who proposed a (somewhat eccentric) method of drawing conclusions by a system of concentric rings. The work of logicians such as the Oxford Calculators led to a method of using letters instead of writing out logical calculations (''calculationes'') in words, a method used, for instance, in the ''Logica magna'' by Paul of Venice. Three hundred years after Llull, the English philosopher and logician Thomas Hobbes suggested that all logic and reasoning could be reduced to the mathematical operations of addition and subtraction. The same idea is found in the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz, who had read both Llull and Hobbes, and who argued that logic can be represented through a combinatorial process or calculus. But, like Llull and Hobbes, he failed to develop a detailed or comprehensive system, and his work on this topic was not published until long after his death. Leibniz says that ordinary languages are subject to "countless ambiguities" and are unsuited for a calculus, whose task is to expose mistakes in inference arising from the forms and structures of words; hence, he proposed to identify an alphabet of human thought comprising fundamental concepts which could be composed to express complex ideas, and create a ''calculus ratiocinator'' that would make all arguments "as tangible as those of the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate." Joseph Diaz Gergonne, Gergonne (1816) said that reasoning does not have to be about objects about which one has perfectly clear ideas, because algebraic operations can be carried out without having any idea of the meaning of the symbols involved. Bernard Bolzano, Bolzano anticipated a fundamental idea of modern proof theory when he defined logical consequence or "deducibility" in terms of variables:
Hence I say that propositions M, N, O,... are ''deducible'' from propositions A, B, C, D,... with respect to variable parts i, j,..., if every class of ideas whose substitution for i, j,... makes all of A, B, C, D,... true, also makes all of M, N, O,... true. Occasionally, since it is customary, I shall say that propositions M, N, O,... ''follow'', or can be ''inferred'' or ''derived'', from A, B, C, D,.... Propositions A, B, C, D,... I shall call the ''premises'', M, N, O,... the ''conclusions.''
This is now known as semantic validity.


Algebraic period

Modern logic begins with what is known as the "algebraic school", originating with Boole and including Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce, William Stanley Jevons, Jevons, Ernst Schröder (mathematician), Schröder, and John Venn, Venn. Their objective was to develop a calculus to formalise reasoning in the area of classes, propositions, and probabilities. The school begins with Boole's seminal work ''Mathematical Analysis of Logic'' which appeared in 1847, although Augustus De Morgan, De Morgan (1847) is its immediate precursor. The fundamental idea of Boole's system is that algebraic formulae can be used to express logical relations. This idea occurred to Boole in his teenage years, working as an usher in a private school in Lincoln, Lincolnshire. For example, let x and y stand for classes, let the symbol ''='' signify that the classes have the same members, xy stand for the class containing all and only the members of x and y and so on. Boole calls these ''elective symbols'', i.e. symbols which select certain objects for consideration.Kneale p. 407 An expression in which elective symbols are used is called an ''elective function'', and an equation of which the members are elective functions, is an ''elective equation''. The theory of elective functions and their "development" is essentially the modern idea of truth-functions and their expression in disjunctive normal form. Boole's system admits of two interpretations, in class logic, and propositional logic. Boole distinguished between "primary propositions" which are the subject of syllogistic theory, and "secondary propositions", which are the subject of propositional logic, and showed how under different "interpretations" the same algebraic system could represent both. An example of a primary proposition is "All inhabitants are either Europeans or Asiatics." An example of a secondary proposition is "Either all inhabitants are Europeans or they are all Asiatics." These are easily distinguished in modern predicate logic, where it is also possible to show that the first follows from the second, but it is a significant disadvantage that there is no way of representing this in the Boolean system. In his ''Symbolic Logic'' (1881), John Venn used diagrams of overlapping areas to express Boolean relations between classes or truth-conditions of propositions. In 1869 Jevons realised that Boole's methods could be mechanised, and constructed a "logical machine" which he showed to the Royal Society the following year. In 1885 Allan Marquand proposed an electrical version of the machine that is still extant
picture at the Firestone Library
. The defects in Boole's system (such as the use of the letter ''v'' for existential propositions) were all remedied by his followers. Jevons published ''Pure Logic, or the Logic of Quality apart from Quantity'' in 1864, where he suggested a symbol to signify exclusive or, which allowed Boole's system to be greatly simplified. This was usefully exploited by Schröder when he set out theorems in parallel columns in his ''Vorlesungen'' (1890–1905). Peirce (1880) showed how all the Boolean elective functions could be expressed by the use of a single primitive binary operation, "Logical NOR, neither ... nor ..." and equally well "Sheffer stroke, not both ... and ...", however, like many of Peirce's innovations, this remained unknown or unnoticed until Henry M. Sheffer, Sheffer rediscovered it in 1913. Boole's early work also lacks the idea of the logical sum which originates in Peirce (1867), Ernst Schröder (mathematician), Schröder (1877) and Jevons (1890), and the concept of Inclusion (logic), inclusion, first suggested by Gergonne (1816) and clearly articulated by Peirce (1870). The success of Boole's algebraic system suggested that all logic must be capable of algebraic representation, and there were attempts to express a logic of relations in such form, of which the most ambitious was Schröder's monumental ''Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik'' ("Lectures on the Algebra of Logic", vol iii 1895), although the original idea was again anticipated by Peirce. Boole's unwavering acceptance of Aristotle's logic is emphasized by the historian of logic John Corcoran (logician), John Corcoran in an accessible introduction to ''The Laws of Thought, Laws of Thought.'' Corcoran also wrote a point-by-point comparison of ''Prior Analytics'' and ''Laws of Thought''. According to Corcoran, Boole fully accepted and endorsed Aristotle's logic. Boole's goals were "to go under, over, and beyond" Aristotle's logic by 1) providing it with mathematical foundations involving equations, 2) extending the class of problems it could treat—from assessing validity to solving equations—and 3) expanding the range of applications it could handle—e.g. from propositions having only two terms to those having arbitrarily many. More specifically, Boole agreed with what
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
said; Boole's 'disagreements', if they might be called that, concern what Aristotle did not say. First, in the realm of foundations, Boole reduced the four propositional forms of Aristotelian logic to formulas in the form of equations—by itself a revolutionary idea. Second, in the realm of logic's problems, Boole's addition of equation solving to logic—another revolutionary idea—involved Boole's doctrine that Aristotle's rules of inference (the "perfect syllogisms") must be supplemented by rules for equation solving. Third, in the realm of applications, Boole's system could handle multi-term propositions and arguments whereas Aristotle could handle only two-termed subject-predicate propositions and arguments. For example, Aristotle's system could not deduce "No quadrangle that is a square is a rectangle that is a rhombus" from "No square that is a quadrangle is a rhombus that is a rectangle" or from "No rhombus that is a rectangle is a square that is a quadrangle".


Logicist period

After Boole, the next great advances were made by the German mathematician Gottlob Frege. Frege's objective was the program of Logicism, i.e. demonstrating that arithmetic is identical with logic.Kneale p. 435 Frege went much further than any of his predecessors in his rigorous and formal approach to logic, and his calculus or Begriffsschrift is important. Frege also tried to show that the concept of number can be defined by purely logical means, so that (if he was right) logic includes arithmetic and all branches of mathematics that are reducible to arithmetic. He was not the first writer to suggest this. In his pioneering work (The Foundations of Arithmetic), sections 15–17, he acknowledges the efforts of Leibniz, J. S. Mill as well as Jevons, citing the latter's claim that "algebra is a highly developed logic, and number but logical discrimination." Frege's first work, the ''Begriffsschrift'' ("concept script") is a rigorously axiomatised system of propositional logic, relying on just two connectives (negational and conditional), two rules of inference (''modus ponens'' and substitution), and six axioms. Frege referred to the "completeness" of this system, but was unable to prove this. The most significant innovation, however, was his explanation of the Quantifier (logic), quantifier in terms of mathematical functions. Traditional logic regards the sentence "Caesar is a man" as of fundamentally the same form as "all men are mortal." Sentences with a proper name subject were regarded as universal in character, interpretable as "every Caesar is a man". At the outset Frege abandons the traditional "concepts ''subject'' and ''predicate''", replacing them with ''argument'' and ''function'' respectively, which he believes "will stand the test of time. It is easy to see how regarding a content as a function of an argument leads to the formation of concepts. Furthermore, the demonstration of the connection between the meanings of the words ''if, and, not, or, there is, some, all,'' and so forth, deserves attention". Frege argued that the quantifier expression "all men" does not have the same logical or semantic form as "all men", and that the universal proposition "every A is B" is a complex proposition involving two ''functions'', namely ' – is A' and ' – is B' such that whatever satisfies the first, also satisfies the second. In modern notation, this would be expressed as : \forall \; x \big( A(x) \rightarrow B (x) \big) In English, "for all x, if Ax then Bx". Thus only singular propositions are of subject-predicate form, and they are irreducibly singular, i.e. not reducible to a general proposition. Universal and particular propositions, by contrast, are not of simple subject-predicate form at all. If "all mammals" were the logical subject of the sentence "all mammals are land-dwellers", then to negate the whole sentence we would have to negate the predicate to give "all mammals are ''not'' land-dwellers". But this is not the case. This functional analysis of ordinary-language sentences later had a great impact on philosophy and linguistics. This means that in Frege's calculus, Boole's "primary" propositions can be represented in a different way from "secondary" propositions. "All inhabitants are either men or women" is : \forall \; x \Big( I(x) \rightarrow \big( M(x) \lor W(x) \big) \Big) whereas "All the inhabitants are men or all the inhabitants are women" is : \forall \; x \big( I(x) \rightarrow M(x) \big) \lor \forall \;x \big( I(x) \rightarrow W(x) \big) As Frege remarked in a critique of Boole's calculus: : "The real difference is that I avoid [the Boolean] division into two parts ... and give a homogeneous presentation of the lot. In Boole the two parts run alongside one another, so that one is like the mirror image of the other, but for that very reason stands in no organic relation to it." As well as providing a unified and comprehensive system of logic, Frege's calculus also resolved the ancient problem of multiple generality. The ambiguity of "every girl kissed a boy" is difficult to express in traditional logic, but Frege's logic resolves this through the different scope of the quantifiers. Thus :\forall \; x \Big( G(x) \rightarrow \exists \; y \big( B(y) \land K(x,y) \big) \Big) means that to every girl there corresponds some boy (any one will do) who the girl kissed. But :\exists \;x \Big( B(x) \land \forall \;y \big( G(y) \rightarrow K(y, x) \big) \Big) means that there is some particular boy whom every girl kissed. Without this device, the project of logicism would have been doubtful or impossible. Using it, Frege provided a definition of the ancestral relation, of the Injective function, many-to-one relation, and of mathematical induction. This period overlaps with the work of what is known as the "mathematical school", which included Richard Dedekind, Dedekind, Moritz Pasch, Pasch, Peano, David Hilbert, Hilbert, Ernst Zermelo, Zermelo, Edward Vermilye Huntington, Huntington, Oswald Veblen, Veblen and Arend Heyting, Heyting. Their objective was the axiomatisation of branches of mathematics like geometry, arithmetic, analysis and set theory. Most notable was Hilbert's Program, which sought to ground all of mathematics to a finite set of axioms, proving its consistency by "finitistic" means and providing a procedure which would decide the truth or falsity of any mathematical statement. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms eponymously. Peano maintained a clear distinction between mathematical and logical symbols. While unaware of Frege's work, he independently recreated his logical apparatus based on the work of Boole and Schröder. The logicist project received a near-fatal setback with the discovery of a paradox in 1901 by Bertrand Russell. This proved Frege's naive set theory led to a contradiction. Frege's theory contained the axiom that for any formal criterion, there is a set of all objects that meet the criterion. Russell showed that a set containing exactly the sets that are not members of themselves would contradict its own definition (if it is not a member of itself, it is a member of itself, and if it is a member of itself, it is not). This contradiction is now known as Russell's paradox. One important method of resolving this paradox was proposed by Ernst Zermelo. Zermelo set theory was the first axiomatic set theory. It was developed into the now-canonical Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF). Russell's paradox symbolically is as follows: :\text R = \ \text R \in R \iff R \not \in R The monumental Principia Mathematica, a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Russell and Alfred North Whitehead and published 1910–1913 also included an attempt to resolve the paradox, by means of an elaborate system of types: a set of elements is of a different type than is each of its elements (set is not the element; one element is not the set) and one cannot speak of the "set of all sets". The ''Principia'' was an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of
axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...
s and inference rules in Mathematical logic, symbolic logic.


Metamathematical period

The names of Gödel and Tarski dominate the 1930s, a crucial period in the development of metamathematics—the study of mathematics using mathematical methods to produce metatheory, metatheories, or mathematical theories about other mathematical theories. Early investigations into metamathematics had been driven by Hilbert's program. Work on metamathematics culminated in the work of Gödel, who in 1929 showed that a given first-order logic, first-order sentence is Provability logic, deducible if and only if it is logically valid—i.e. it is true in every structure (mathematical logic), structure for its language. This is known as Gödel's completeness theorem. A year later, he proved two important theorems, which showed Hibert's program to be unattainable in its original form. The first is that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an Effective method, effective procedure such as an algorithm or computer program is capable of proving all facts about the natural numbers. For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second is that if such a system is also capable of proving certain basic facts about the natural numbers, then the system cannot prove the consistency of the system itself. These two results are known as Gödel's incompleteness theorems, or simply ''Gödel's Theorem''. Later in the decade, Gödel developed the concept of set-theoretic constructibility, as part of his proof that the axiom of choice and the continuum hypothesis are consistent with Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. In proof theory, Gerhard Gentzen developed natural deduction and the sequent calculus. The former attempts to model logical reasoning as it 'naturally' occurs in practice and is most easily applied to intuitionistic logic, while the latter was devised to clarify the derivation of logical proofs in any formal system. Since Gentzen's work, natural deduction and sequent calculi have been widely applied in the fields of proof theory, mathematical logic and computer science. Gentzen also proved normalization and cut-elimination theorems for intuitionistic and classical logic which could be used to reduce logical proofs to a normal form. Alfred Tarski, a pupil of Jan Łukasiewicz, Łukasiewicz, is best known for his definition of truth and logical consequence, and the semantic concept of Open sentence, logical satisfaction. In 1933, he published (in Polish) ''The concept of truth in formalized languages'', in which he proposed his semantic theory of truth: a sentence such as "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. Tarski's theory separated the metalanguage, which makes the statement about truth, from the object language, which contains the sentence whose truth is being asserted, and gave a correspondence (the T-schema) between phrases in the object language and elements of an interpretation (logic), interpretation. Tarski's approach to the difficult idea of explaining truth has been enduringly influential in logic and philosophy, especially in the development of model theory. Tarski also produced important work on the methodology of deductive systems, and on fundamental principles such as completeness (logic), completeness, decidability (logic), decidability, consistency and Structure (mathematical logic), definability. According to Anita Feferman, Tarski "changed the face of logic in the twentieth century". Alonzo Church and Alan Turing proposed formal models of computability, giving independent negative solutions to Hilbert's ''Entscheidungsproblem'' in 1936 and 1937, respectively. The ''Entscheidungsproblem'' asked for a procedure that, given any formal mathematical statement, would algorithmically determine whether the statement is true. Church and Turing proved there is no such procedure; Turing's paper introduced the halting problem as a key example of a mathematical problem without an algorithmic solution. Church's system for computation developed into the modern λ-calculus, while the Turing machine became a standard model for a general-purpose computing device. It was soon shown that many other proposed models of computation were equivalent in power to those proposed by Church and Turing. These results led to the Church–Turing thesis that any deterministic algorithm that can be carried out by a human can be carried out by a Turing machine. Church proved additional undecidability results, showing that both Peano arithmetic and first-order logic are Undecidable problem, undecidable. Later work by Emil Post and Stephen Cole Kleene in the 1940s extended the scope of computability theory and introduced the concept of degrees of unsolvability. The results of the first few decades of the twentieth century also had an impact upon
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a broad movement within Western philosophy, especially English-speaking world, anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis as a philosophical method; clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic, mat ...
and
philosophical logic Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophic ...
, particularly from the 1950s onwards, in subjects such as
modal logic Modal logic is a kind of logic used to represent statements about Modality (natural language), necessity and possibility. In philosophy and related fields it is used as a tool for understanding concepts such as knowledge, obligation, and causality ...
, temporal logic, deontic logic, and
relevance logic Relevance logic, also called relevant logic, is a kind of non-classical logic requiring the antecedent and consequent of implications to be relevantly related. They may be viewed as a family of substructural or modal logics. It is generally, b ...
.


Logic after WWII

After World War II,
mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...
branched into four inter-related but separate areas of research: model theory, proof theory, computability theory, and set theory. In set theory, the method of Forcing (mathematics), forcing revolutionized the field by providing a robust method for constructing models and obtaining independence results. Paul Cohen introduced this method in 1963 to prove the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. His technique, which was simplified and extended soon after its introduction, has since been applied to many other problems in all areas of mathematical logic. Computability theory had its roots in the work of Turing, Church, Kleene, and Post in the 1930s and 40s. It developed into a study of abstract computability, which became known as recursion theory. The Turing degree, priority method, discovered independently by Albert Muchnik and Richard Friedberg in the 1950s, led to major advances in the understanding of the degrees of unsolvability and related structures. Research into higher-order computability theory demonstrated its connections to set theory. The fields of constructive analysis and computable analysis were developed to study the effective content of classical mathematical theorems; these in turn inspired the program of reverse mathematics. A separate branch of computability theory, computational complexity theory, was also characterized in logical terms as a result of investigations into descriptive complexity. Model theory applies the methods of mathematical logic to study models of particular mathematical theories. Alfred Tarski published much pioneering work in the field, which is named after a series of papers he published under the title ''Contributions to the theory of models''. In the 1960s, Abraham Robinson used model-theoretic techniques to develop calculus and analysis based on non-standard analysis, infinitesimals, a problem that first had been proposed by Leibniz. In proof theory, the relationship between classical mathematics and intuitionistic mathematics was clarified via tools such as the realizability method invented by Georg Kreisel and Gödel's Dialectica interpretation, ''Dialectica'' interpretation. This work inspired the contemporary area of proof mining. The Curry–Howard correspondence emerged as a deep analogy between logic and computation, including a correspondence between systems of natural deduction and typed lambda calculus, typed lambda calculi used in computer science. As a result, research into this class of formal systems began to address both logical and computational aspects; this area of research came to be known as modern type theory. Advances were also made in ordinal analysis and the study of independence results in arithmetic such as the Paris–Harrington theorem. This was also a period, particularly in the 1950s and afterwards, when the ideas of mathematical logic begin to influence philosophical thinking. For example, tense logic is a formalised system for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time. The philosopher Arthur Prior played a significant role in its development in the 1960s. Modal logics extend the scope of formal logic to include the elements of Linguistic modality, modality (for example, possibility and Necessary and sufficient conditions#Necessary conditions, necessity). The ideas of Saul Kripke, particularly about possible worlds, and the formal system now called Kripke semantics have had a profound impact on
analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a broad movement within Western philosophy, especially English-speaking world, anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis as a philosophical method; clarity of prose; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic, mat ...
. His best known and most influential work is ''Naming and Necessity'' (1980).See ''Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: The Age of Meaning'', Scott Soames: "''Naming and Necessity'' is among the most important works ever, ranking with the classical work of Frege in the late nineteenth century, and of Russell, Tarski and Wittgenstein in the first half of the twentieth century". Cited in Byrne, Alex and Hall, Ned. 2004. 'Necessary Truths'. ''Boston Review'' October/November 2004 Deontic logics are closely related to modal logics: they attempt to capture the logical features of obligation, Permission (philosophy), permission and related concepts. Although some basic novelties syncretism, syncretizing mathematical and philosophical logic were shown by Bernard Bolzano#Metaphysics, Bolzano in the early 1800s, it was Ernst Mally, a pupil of Alexius Meinong, who was to propose the first formal deontic system in his ''Grundgesetze des Sollens'', based on the syntax of Whitehead's and Russell's
propositional calculus The propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. Sometimes, it is called ''first-order'' propositional logic to contra ...
. Another logical system founded after World War II was fuzzy logic by Azerbaijani mathematician Lotfi Asker Zadeh in 1965.


See also

* History of deductive reasoning * History of inductive reasoning * History of abductive reasoning * History of the function concept * History of mathematics * Philosophy#History, History of Philosophy * Plato's beard * Timeline of mathematical logic


Notes


References

; Primary Sources *
Alexander of Aphrodisias Alexander of Aphrodisias (; AD) was a Peripatetic school, Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle, commentators on the writings of Aristotle. He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria and liv ...
, ''In Aristotelis An. Pr. Lib. I Commentarium'', ed. Wallies, Berlin, C.I.A.G. vol. II/1, 1882. * Avicenna, ''Avicennae Opera'' Venice 1508. *
Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...
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Sextus Empiricus Sextus Empiricus (, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician with Roman citizenship. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the argument ...
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External links


The History of Logic from Aristotle to Gödel
with annotated bibliographies on the history of logic * * *
Paul Spade's "Thoughts Words and Things"
– An Introduction to Late Mediaeval Logic and Semantic Theory (PDF)
Open Access pdf download; Insights, Images, Bios, and links for 178 logicians
by David Marans {{bots, deny=Yobot History of logic, Logic History of science by discipline, Logic