A Primer of Formal Logic by John C. Cooley, Ph. D. (review)

Abstract

204 FRANCISCAN STUDIES There are a few corrections to be made in Dr. Tozzer’s notes. (1 ) It is not only irrelevant but also irreverent to say (p. 16, note 93) that "God also provided Cortés with a mistress.” (2 ) Cifuéntes, the Spanish town where Landa was born and buried, is said (p. 44, note 44) to be in the province of Toledo, whereas this town is in the Alcarria, a desolate and mountainous region in the province of Guadalajara. (3) Landa was the fifth, not the fourth Bishop of Yucatan; Tozzer evidently did not take into ac­ count the first bishop, Father Julian Garcés, O. P., 1519. (4) Tozzer errs in stating (p. 84, note 352) that the professorship of Scotus at the Spanish University of Alcalá "was probably in honor of Michael Scot, who had posthumous fame as an author on alchemy, astrology, and other occult sci­ ences. He died about 1291." Tozzer has confused Michael with John Duns Scotiis. The Chair of Scotus at the great University founded in Spain bv the Franciscan Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros was for the study and teaching of the works of John Duns Scotus, the great Franciscan Scholastic (12651308 ). The Michael Scott to whom Tozzer refers was a Scottish mathe­ matician, scientist, and philosopher, born about 1175, died probably in 1235, who lived some years in Toledo, Spain, where he translated some works of Aristotle, Avicena, and Averroes into Latin from the Arabic. He was a cleric, but not a friar, and he was offered nominations to become Archbishoo of Cashel, Ireland, and of Canterbury, England. His fame as a medieval scientist became legendary, and he figures as a "magician” in Dante’s Inferno, Boccaccio’s Decatnerone, and in Sir Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel. (5 )We also note the omission in Tozzer’s Bibliography of the important work by the great Spanish historian, Manuel Serrano y Sanz, entitled: Vida y escritos de Fr. Diego de Landa, published first in the Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos. 3a época, I (1897), 54-60, 109-117. There is no doubt that this eighth edition of Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan by Dr. Tozzer will henceforth be considered the definitive edition, a most important contribution in the field of Hispanic-American History, a source-book of information concerning Maya studies, and á treasure-store of data for some future Franciscan history of the Americas. R oderick W h eeler , O. F. M. Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure College, St. Bonaventure, N .Y . A Primer of Formal Logic. By John C. Cooley, Ph.D. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942. Pp. xii+378.) The highly abstract and formalistic character of modern logic usually has a negative effect even on many of those who are not a priori opposed to it. To those the Primer of Formal Logic offers a comparatively easy, and in any case more "natural,” way of getting acquainted with modern sym­ bolic logic— or, to be exact, with that logic which is developed in the Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell. The book is primarily conceived as a classroom textbook, but it seems to provide a suitable basis for private study as well. For it explains every step and every symbol to such an extent that further explanations by a teacher may be dispensed with- BOOK REVIEWS 205 Thus Cooley has succeeded in writing an introduction to Symbolic Logic which will earn him the gratitude of those who try to learn or to teach the mysteries of modern Formalism. The book can be divided into four parts. The first part is meant only as an introduction to the notion of formality and the symbolism of modern logic. It starts with a discussion of conditional syllogisms, and then leads (gradually adding, and step by step explaining, new symbolism) to a nondeductive treatment of the prepositional calculus (Chapters II and III), to the lower functional calculus (quantification theory), and even to a very elementary theory of classes and relations (Chapters IV and V ). The second part recapitulates the whole matter discussed in the previous chapters, but develops it as an elementary deductive system (or...