![]() In this division of logic, the focus is often reasoning expressed within everyday language. This is why informal logic for the most part dispenses with special symbols and formulas. Informal logic studies the non-formal aspects of reasoning-qualities that cannot be accurately translated into abstract symbols. This is why formal logic is sometimes also called “symbolic logic” or “mathematical logic.” Since ancient times, logicians have used special symbols and formulas, similar to those used in mathematics, to record the abstract logical forms they have discovered. Here the focus is on form rather than content, that is, on the logical structure of reasoning apart from what it is specifically about. Major Divisions of Logicįormal logic studies the abstract patterns or forms of correct reasoning. Logic remains part of the core curriculum around the world today because the principles of correct reasoning can help anyone reason more accurately, no matter what subject, making it an all-purpose “tool kit” for your mind. For twenty-five hundred years, it has been considered a core academic requirement at institutions of higher learning around the world. Logic was first taught as an academic subject in the universities of ancient Athens, Greece during the fourth century BC, making it one of the oldest of all academic subjects. Although it is almost a platitude among historians that great intellectual advances are never the work of only one person (in founding the science of geometry Euclid made use of the results of Eudoxus and others in the case of mechanics Newton stood upon the shoulders of Descartes, Galileo, and Kepler and so on), Aristotle, according to all available evidence, created the science of logic absolutely ex nihilo. The noted twentieth-century logician and philosopher Benson Mates writes:Į can say flatly that the history of logic begins with the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Thus, in five highly original (and extremely complex) works, collectively known as the Organon (Greek for “tool,” as in “general tool of thought”), Aristotle launched the study of the principles of correct reasoning and earned the title historians have conferred on him: founder of logic. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote the first book on the standards of correct reasoning and later wrote four additional treatises on the subject. Because correct reasoning can be applied to any subject matter whatsoever, the number of potential applications of logical theory is practically unlimited. You can improve your reasoning by studying the principles of logic, just as you can improve your number-crunching abilities by studying the principles of mathematics. The rules of logic are guides to correct reasoning just as the rules of arithmetic are guides to correctly adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers, the principles of photography are guides to taking good photos, and so on. The logician asks, Which rules should we follow if we want our reasoning to be the best possible? Logic, as an academic subject, is the systematic study of those principles. However, they have not always been aware of the general principles that distinguish logical from illogical forms of thought. Human beings have been thinking logically (and sometimes illogically) since the earliest era of human existence. ![]()
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