Logic Textbooks Research Articles

The Elaboration of Vives's Treatises on the Arts

Ludovicus Vives published his De disciplinis in \ 1531, in the fortieth year of his life. The work is a systematic review of the arts and sciences, in twenty-one books, proceeding from a history of the trivium and quadrivium to a proposal for a reformed university, a character test for teachers, and a set of improved textbooks in metaphysics and logic (to which Vives later added expositions of rhetoric and psychology). A work of this scope would probably have been begun a number of years before publication, especially if those years were full of other activities.

The Nature and Limits of Logic

THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF LOGIC LGIC, as logic, does not investigate its own nature. Epistemology does this for logic. However, there is no one for whom the epistemological knowledge of the nature and scope of logic is more significant than for the man who happens to be a logician. Yet it is clear from an examination of our treatises and textbooks in logic that the men who author them disagree, sometimes rather significantly, on the epistemological character of logic. In the face of sometimes contradictory opinions about the nature of logic, it is clear that some of our logicians rather thoroughly misevaluate the significance of logic. Because logic is universally and necessarily propaedeutic to any scientific effort, it is not surprising that this misunderstanding on the nature of logic has serious consequences for all the academic disciplines. It is easy to allow more to logic than logic deserves, and the history of philosophy yields more than one example of over-extended logicism. It is easy too, in reaction to this, to allow less to logic than logic deserves. Thus some would make of logic a highly restricted instrument of the intellect for a very limited area of scientific discourse. In truth, logic is not a universal science embracing all other sciences (or any other science) either as integral or as subjective parts, and yet it remains universally an instrument of the reason for all scientific discourse. The intention of this paper is to initiate an investigation into the nature of logic which will make these points clear. This study will not be exhaustive, and yet it will be developed in the light of those distinctions in terms of which any exhaustive study should be made. This paper is at best a preliminary work, yet it is determinately in conflict with many current notions about the nature and limits of logic. . The occasion for this paper is the widespread disagreement on the nature and importance of logic. The immediate inspira47 48 EDWARD D. SIMMONS tion for it is a footnote suggested by the translators of The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas.1 The footnote arises in the context of a discussion on the speculative, but " useful," character of logic. In the footnote the translators broaden the discussion and suggest "that the ideal noetic treatment (of logic) would correlate these four frequently made distinctions and divisions within logic: science and art, doctrinal and in use, formal and material, and dialectical and judicative or demonstrative." In our opinion, these are the fundamental distinctions in terms of which logic must be epistemologically understood. This paper will attempt to meet the challenge implicit in the footnote just quoted. It will be an attempt to correlate these distinctions in order to lay at least the groundwork of an adequate investigation into the nature of logic. Logic is both an art and a science. It is a strange kind of art, and it is a unique type of science. It is an art without being practical, and it is a science which is speculative, despite the fact that its value lies only in its use. And it is one discipline which is simultaneously both an art and a science. It seems that almost every textbook in logic distinguishes between the art of logic and the science of logic. But not all of them agree precisely on the character of logic as an art and logic as a science. To begin with, some would allow logic to be treated either as a science or as an art, despite the fact that logic is indivisibly art and science. Further, in most , 1 The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, translated by Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, and G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago, 1955), pp. 598-594, note 85. Although it is this particular footnote which has proximately inspired this essay, we readily and gratefully acknowledge a larger debt both to John of St. Thomas and to his translators. Perhaps the most helpful primary source for this study has been John's analysis of the nature of logic in. the first two questions of the second part of his Ara Logica. Certainly nothing could have been...

Entailment and relevance1

Those who object to the identification of strict implication and entail-ment speak in such a way that for A to entail B, A must be relevant to B. This view of entailment agrees not only with that of the naive student of logic (who tends to think the phrase paradoxes of “implication” more accurate than “paradoxes” of implication), but also with that expressed in the initial chapters of many textbooks in logic under the heading “Fallacies of Relevance.”2In regard to formal theories proposed as explications of the notion of entailment, it becomes important to have at our disposal some formal account of the demand for relevance as between antecedent and consequent of an entailment.

Some comments on the experimental method

Abstract The conventional conception of an experiment embraces two distinct and separate features. Were these merely distinguishable but inseparable, there would be little need to do more than remark upon the fact. But as these features do not invariably occur together and as the methodologically less important tends to be regarded as the characteristic feature of experiment, further discussion seems justified. The first is brought out in the usual contrast of the logic textbooks between simple (or natural) and experimental observation, the one dealing with phenomena as they occur ‘in the ordinary course of events’ and the other with phenomena evoked by the experimenter in order that he may observe them. The second is illustrated by what Woodworth (10) has called the rule of one variable, viz. that all relevant conditions but one be held constant while that one is varied. But as there are more complex experimental designs than this formulation suggests and as the words themselves suggest active interventi...

A. Wolf. Textbook of logic. Second edition revised and enlarged. George Allen & Unwin, London1938 (reprinted 1943, 1948), 455 pp.

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Notices

Why God Created the World. By J. Stufler, S. J. Translated by E. F. Sutcliffe, S. J.A Textbook of Logic. By Sylvester J. Hartman.Hymns to the Church. By Gertrud von le Fort.Intercessions. Poems by Denis Devlin.The Weather Vanes of Norfolk and Norwich. By C. J. W. Messent.Love in Action. By the Right Reverend Francis Underhill, D. D.The Shropshire Racket. By Stephen L. Robertson; drawings by Thomas Derrick.

Logic in Theory and Practice

AN additional text-book of logic will not necessarily improve the “low ranking in popularity” of that subject. Yet, Prof. Shaw has written one with the object of trying to make logic “as vital and interesting as its frigid forms will permit”. It is difficult to say whether the author has succeeded in this undertaking, as the response has to come from the student rather than from the teacher. But in so far as the latter is concerned, he will find little in this new book to justify its substitution for other similar works. A point in its favour is the fact that the author tries to be more human in his exposition of the traditional theories: his treatment of the logic of judgment and of the hypothetical syllogism are good illustrations of this characteristic. But on the other hand, there are many points of scientific method which he has deliberately overlooked, though they have their place in the scheme of the inductive process. The additional chapters of the theory of knowledge are not at all out of process, though they raise more problems than they can attempt to solve. The writing and the production of the book show, never theless, that logic still has a good following and that it deserves a still greater one. Logic in Theory and Practice Prof. C. G. Shaw By. Pp. xvii + 428. (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1935.) 8s. 6d. net.

(1) A System of Logistic (2) The Nature of Mathematics: a Critical Survey (3) Idealistic Logic: a Study of its Aim, Method and Achievement

THE number of those who still believe in a perfect continuity between logic and mathematics does not appear to increase to any appreciable extent. Gone are the heroic days when Russell's aphorism to the effect that “Logic is the youth of Mathematics, and Mathematics is the manhood of Logic“was reverently admitted to be a proved belief. The dazzling complexity and austere beauty of the “Principia Mathematica”, a perennial masterpiece of which British thought has every right to be proud, caused people to hesitate taking up Russell's challenge “to indicate at what point in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica they consider that Logic ends and Mathematics begins”. A casual visit to any public or college library would show conclusively that persistent thumb-marks can scarcely be found beyond Part 1 of the first volume of the “Principia”: faith leaves the “Prolegomena to Cardinal Arithmetic“and the last two volumes of that monumental work shrouded in their virginal brilliance. What is more, authors of textbooks of logic have asserted that negation and disjunction are the basic operations proposed in the second edition of the “Principia”: they had failed to realise that there is an “Introduction to the Second Edition“in which Russell and Whitehead adopt as primitive in the prepositional calculus the single notion of ‘incompatibility’, and direct the reader to replace their original theory of generalised deduction by an important chapter given in an appendix at the end of the volume and based entirely on the stroke notation. (1) A System of Logistic. By Dr. Willard Van Orman Quine. Pp. xi + 204. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1934.) 20s. net. (2) The Nature of Mathematics: a Critical Survey. By Max Black. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. xiv + 219. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1933.) 10s. 6d. net. (3) Idealistic Logic: a Study of its Aim, Method and Achievement. By C. R. Morris. Pp. ix + 338. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1933.) 12s. 6d. net.

Textbook of Logic.

Textbook of Logic.

Textbook of Logic.

Textbook of Logic.

Textbook of Logic.

Textbook of Logic.

VI.—NEW BOOKS

Journal Article VI.—NEW BOOKS Get access A Text-book of Logic. By ARTHUR ERNEST DAVIES, Professor of Philosophy in the Ohio State University. R. G. Adams & Co, 1915. Pp xxviii, 601. G. F. S. G. F. S. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mind, Volume XXV, Issue 3, 1916, Pages 407–409, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XXV.3.407 Published: 01 January 1916

Eléments de Philosophie biologique

PROGRESS in knowledge takes place by the discovery of facts, and by drawing inferences from the facts discovered. It is commonly supposed that the facts existed before we discovered them; and this hypothesis stands the test of practical utility. But it is not supposed, except by the most careless thinkers, that the inferences which we draw from the facts—our laws and principles—are anything more than conceptual summaries of the facts and sequences of facts within our ken. (We use the word fact, not because in current usage it means that about which there can be no doubt, but because it includes a wider range of phenomena than the word “thing.” The fact that 25 per cent, of the peas, produced by breeding from hybrids resulting from the union of a yellow and a green pea, are green can hardly be described as a “thing.” Our inferences may be right or they may be wrong, but they did not exist before we made them. Whether we can draw any sharp distinction between fact and inference; or, to put it in terms of space, whether we can draw a line of demarcation and say where fact ends and where inference begins, is a question which concerns the modern biologist perhaps more vitally than any other; yet it is one which very few have definitely formulated, much less attempted to answer. The cause of the almost universal failure to provide a satisfactory answer is a habit of the mind, encouraged by text-books of logic, which drives it to classify things, often dichotomously, into two mutually exclusive categories. Music affords an example. Some folk hold that the music of certain authors is good, whilst that of others is bad. Others, however, say that taste is a purely relative matter, and that no one has a right to say that the music of a given author is good, or bad, as the case may be.