Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T04:20:58.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Language and logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2007

Donald Rutherford
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access

Summary

In their monumental work, The Development of Logic, Martha Kneale and William Kneale maintain that during the seventeenth century logic was “in decline as a branch of philosophy.” But an era that included Leibniz, who according to the Kneales “deserves to be ranked among the greatest of all logicians,” as well as Locke, who dismisses formal logic as “learned Ignorance” while writing “the first modern treatise devoted specifically to philosophy of language,” suggests drama and excitement, not decline. While traditional logic was indeed in decline, logic itself was being transformed into modern mathematical logic. Moreover, the turn away from formal logic was also a dramatic turn to natural language for insight and solutions to the problems of philosophy. These two turns, the mathematical and linguistic turns of early modern philosophy, are defining features of seventeenth-century European philosophy.

EARLY MODERN LOGIC

In 1626, the Dutch logician Franco Burgesdijk maintained that there were three kinds of logicians: Aristotelians, Ramists, and Semi-Ramists. While Aristotelians continued to develop Aristotle’s logic of categorical syllogisms and immediate inferences, Ramists sought alternative logics that captured reasoning that traditional Aristotelian logic ignored. Semi-Ramists, also called “Philippo- Ramists” after Luther’s collaborator Philipp Melanchthon, sought a synthesis of traditional and alternative logics, which included the search for formal methods to capture nonsyllogistic reasoning.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×