Handbook of the History of Logic (original) (raw)

2004, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic

The Megarians and the Stoics. Pp. 397-522 Tony Street. Arabic logic. Pp. 523-596 Charles Burnett. The translation of Arabic works on logic into Latin in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Pp. 597-606 This is the first book in a series of several large volumes on the history of logic. This series adresses ". .. members of the research communities in logic, history of logic and philosophy of logic, as well as those in kindred areas such as computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, argumentation theory and history of ideas. .. The Handbook of the history of logic aims at being a definitive research work for any member of the relevant research communities" (from the Preface).-The first volume has, in accordance with its title, three main areas: Greek Logic (Aristotelian logic, Stoic logic-five articles, 437 pages), Arabic logic (two articles, 83 pages), Indian logic (one article of 85 pages). Thus this Handbook continues with a tradition, which was begun by Bocheński, of including a certain amount of discussion on non-European logic. Indian and Arabian logic are very different in this respect: Whilst Arabian logic is a direct offspring of Greek logic and, since the Middle ages, has entered the main stream of European logic once again, Indian logic is considered to have grown up independently of the Greek tradition. Let us remark that this volume of the Handbook of the history of logic does not contain any information on the only logic which is based on a non-Indo-European language: Chinese logic. We will return to this point later on. There are inherent obstacles impeding our understanding of the achievements of our logical ancestors. The work of many a great logician suffered from serious interpretative faults of posterity. Aristotelian Logic has been the main target for misleading interpretational attacks for more than 2000 years, and Stoic logic has undergone a continuous maltreatment almost up to the present day. Concerning the Stoics, O'Toole and Jennings, in their masterful chapter in the book under review, point to the problematic role of historians of logic like Prantl and Zeller who had not enough formal background and interest to enable them to differentiate between the Aristotelian logic of terms and the Stoic logic of propositions. Today, in the age of mathematical logic, we frequently meet another kind of misinterpretation of ancient logics, committed even by outstanding logicians (and historians!) like Łukasiewicz and Bocheński: It is not that we know too little of formal and symbolic systems, but, on the contrary, ". .. that there is a danger that the historian of logic possessing this requisite of mathematical logic may allow his or her familiarity with the discipline to obscure, or even distort, the historical enterprise" (p. 398). Thus, O'Toole and Jennings try to ". .. attempt an interpretation of Stoic logic less coloured by a reverence for modern formal systems, and more in harmony with what the texts seem to indicate as being the place of logic in the Stoic system as a whole" (p. 400). This statement could serve as a motto for the whole handbook series! The first chapter by J. Moravcsik, "Logic before Aristotle: Development or Birth?" gives some answers to the question "was there logic before Aristotle in Western Culture?" The author traces the development of what was a necessary background for logic as a formal discipline, relying on the work of Bruno Snell, under the general headline "from myth to logic". The paper concentrates on a discussion of concepts and vocabulary presupposed by logic (Chapter 1), gives an account of the links between logic and definition (Chapter 2) and, in the last chapter, elaborates on the differences between Plato's Method of Division and https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.