Modern logic

The 16th century

Renaissance writers sometimes denounced all of scholastic logic. The humanism of the Renaissance is often seen as promoting the study of Greek and Roman classics, but Aristotle’s logic was frequently regarded as being so hopelessly bound together with “sterile” medieval logic as to constitute an exception to this spirit of rebirth. Some, such as Martin Luther (1483–1546), were repelled by any hint of Aristotelianism. Others, such as the great humanist essayist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), occasionally praised Aristotle but never his logical theory; like many writers in the Renaissance, Erasmus found in the theory of the syllogism only “subtlety and arid ingenuity” (Johan Huizinga, Erasmus [1924]). The German Lutheran humanist Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) had a more balanced appreciation of Aristotle’s logic. Melanchthon’s Compendaria dialectices ratio (“Brief Outline of Dialects”) of 1520, built upon his Institutiones Rhetoricae of the previous year, became a popular Lutheran text. There he described his purpose as presenting “a true, pure and uncomplicated logic, just as we have received it from Aristotle and some of his judicious commentators.” Elsewhere, influential writers such as Rabalais, Petrarch, and Montaigne had few kind words for logic as they knew it.

The French reformer and pamphleteer Petrus Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) was also the author of extremely influential “Reform” logical texts. His Dialectique (Dialectics) of 1555 (translated into English in 1574) was the first major logical work in a modern language. In this work and in his Dialecticae libri duo (“Two Books of Dialectics”) of 1556 he combined attacks on scholastic logic, an emphasis on the use of logic in actual arguments (“dialectics”), and a presentation of a much simplified approach to categorical syllogism (without an attempt to follow Aristotle). Elsewhere, he proposed that reasoning should be taught by using Euclid’s Elements rather than by the study of the syllogism. He devoted special attention to valid syllogisms with singular premises, such as “Octavius is the heir of Caesar. I am Octavius. Therefore, I am the heir of Caesar.” Singular terms (such as proper names) had been treated by earlier logicians: Pseudo-Scotus, among others, had proposed assimilating them to universal propositions by understanding “Julius Caesar is mortal” as “All Julius Caesars are mortal.” Although Ramus’ proposals for singular terms were not widely accepted, his concern for explicitly addressing them and his refusal to use artificial techniques to convert them to standard forms prefigured more recent interests. Although it had its precursors in medieval semantic thought, Ramus’ division of thought into a hierarchy composed of concepts, judgments, arguments, and method was influential in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Scholastic logic remained alive, especially in predominantly Roman Catholic universities and countries, such as Italy and Spain. Some of this work had considerable value, even though it was outside of the mainstream logical tradition, from which it diverged in the 16th century. If the Reform tradition of Melanchthon and Ramus represents one major tradition in modern logic, and the neo-scholastic tradition another, then (here following the historian of logic Nicholai Ivanovich Styazhkin) a third tradition is found in the followers of the Spanish (Majorcan) soldier, priest, missionary, and mystic Ramón Lull (1235–1315). His Ars magna, generalis et ultima (1501; “Great, General and Ultimate Art”) represents an attempt to symbolize concepts and derive propositions that form various combinations of possibilities. These notions, associated with lore of the Kabbala, later influenced Pascal and Leibniz and the rise of probability theory. Lull’s influence can be seen more directly in the work of his fellow Spaniard Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540), who used a V-shaped symbol to indicate the inclusion of one term in another (see illustration). Other work inspired by Lull includes the logic and notational system of the German logician Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638). The work of Vives and Alsted represents perhaps the first systematic effort at a logical symbolism.

With the 17th century came increasing interest in symbolizing logic. These symbolizations sometimes took graphic or pictorial forms but more often used letters in the manner of algebra to stand for propositions, concepts, classes, properties, and relations, as well as special symbols for logical notions. Inspired by the triumphs achieved in mathematics after it had turned to the systematic use of special symbols, logicians hoped to imitate this success. The systematic application of symbols and abbreviations and the conscious hope that through this application great progress could be made have been a distinguishing characteristic of modern logic into the 20th century.

The modern era saw major changes not only in the external appearance of logical writings but also in the purposes of logic. Logic for Aristotle was a theory of ideal human reasoning and inference that also had clear pedagogical value. Early modern logicians stressed what they called “dialectics” (or “rhetoric”), because “logic” had come to mean an elaborate scholastic theory of reasoning that was not always directed toward improving reasoning. A related goal was to extend the scope of human reasoning beyond textbook syllogistic theory and to acknowledge that there were important kinds of valid inference that could not be formulated in traditional Aristotelian syllogistic. But another part of the rejection of Aristotelian logic (broadly conceived to include scholastic logic) is best explained by the changing and quite new goals that logic took on in the modern era. One such goal was the development of an ideal logical language that naturally expressed ideal thought and was more precise than natural languages. Another goal was to develop methods of thinking and discovery that would accelerate or improve human thought or would allow its replacement by mechanical devices. Whereas Aristotelian logic had seen itself as a tool for training “natural” abilities at reasoning, later logics proposed vastly improving meagre and wavering human tendencies and abilities. The linking of logic with mathematics was an especially characteristic theme in the modern era. Finally, in the modern era came an intense consciousness of the importance of logical form (forms of sentences, as well as forms or patterns of arguments). Although the medievals made many distinctions among patterns of sentences and arguments, the modern logical notion of “form” perhaps first crystallized in the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton and the English mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan (De Morgan’s Formal Logic of 1847). The now standard discussions of validity, invalidity, and the self-conscious separation of “formal” from nonformal aspects of sentences and arguments all trace their roots to this work.