If A, then B : how the world discovered logic / Michael Shenefelt & Heidi White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shenefelt, Michael, 1953- author.

White, Heidi, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Logic--History.

Logic.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (351 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, [New York] : Columbia University Press, 2013.

Summary:

While logical principles seem timeless, placeless, and eternal, their discovery is a story of personal accidents, political tragedies, and broad social change. If A, Then B begins with logic's emergence twenty-three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since. It explores where our sense of logic comes from and what it really is a sense of. It also explains what drove human beings to start studying logic in the first place.Logic is more than the work of logicians alone. Its discoveries have survived only because logicians have also been able to find a willing audience, an

Contents:

Table of Contents; Preface; Introduction: What Is Logic? ; The Strange Nature of Logical Validity ; What Makes a Valid Argument Valid? ; The Divine-Command Theory of Logic ; Logic as Culturally Invariant ; Logic as Timeless and Placeless; The Social History of Logic; 1. The Dawn of Logic; The Effect of Geography on the Flow of Ideas; The Effect of the Sea Trade; Transportation and Civilization ; Classical Greece as the Extreme Case; The Athenian Assembly ; 2. Aristotle: Greatest of the Greek Logicians; The Study of Argument in India ; The Singularity of Aristotle

The Effect of the Athenian Assembly The Sophists; The Separation of Logic from Rhetoric ; 3. Aristotle's System: The Logic of Classification ; Manipulating Classes; The Square of Opposition ; The Underlying Mystery of the Square; Wittgenstein's Proposed Solution ; Wittgenstein's Mistake ; 4. Chrysippus and the Stoics: A World of Interlocking Structures; The Stoics; The Logic of Choice; The Nature of Compound Propositions; Interlocking Forms of Argument ; The Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle ; More Interlocking Forms ; The Basis of Computer Logic

5. Logic Versus Anti-Logic: The Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle Paradoxes of Truth ; The Nature of Fuzzy Logic ; Is Validity Relative? ; Does Formal Logic Ultimately Depend on Common Sense? ; 6. Logical Fanatics, Circular Reasoning, and Descartes's Fundamental Principle ; The Origins of the Wars of Religion ; The Importance of Firm Foundations; The Logical Complexity of Our Premises; The Origins of Formalized Logic and Mathematics; The Paradoxes of Formalization ; The Double Meaning of ""Foundations"" ; The Outlook of Thomas Kuhn ; Kuhn's Error

Competition Between Scientific Theories7. Will the Future Resemble the Past?: Inductive Logic and Scientific Method; The Challenge of the New Literature; The Triumph of the Vernacular and the Growing Spirit of Equality ; The Rise of Modern Political Theory ; The Right of Dissent and the Reliance on Induction ; Induction as the New Rationality ; Aristotle's Influence on the Medievals; The Rational Foundations of Induction ; The Apparent Irreducibility of Induction ; The Assumptions of Empirical Science; 8. Rhetorical Frauds and Sophistical Ploys: Ten Classic Tricks

The Battle for Parliamentary Reform Jeremy Bentham and the Legacy of the Enlightenment; Bentham's Book of Fallacies; 9. Symbolic Logic and the Digital Future ; The Impact of the Industrial Revolution ; The Origins of Symbolic Logic; The Logic of Relations; The Effect of the New Mathematics; The Impact of Quantification ; Frege's New Foundation for Mathematics; The Invention of Digital Computing ; 10. Faith and the Limits of Logic: The Last Unanswered Question ; Abelard's Rise to Power; Abelard's Attack on Faith Without Reason ; Are Faith and Reason Compatible?

The Foundations of Rational Belief

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231535199

0231535198

OCLC:

851970421