Complete Logic

Author: (English) Occam
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Occam's works can be roughly divided into three parts. One part is theological works, mainly his commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences. Another part is political theology works, mainly his treatises against the Pope written after he fled Avignon. The third part is his logical and philosophical works, among which, the most important work is the Summa Logicae. In medieval Europe, logic was the foundational course to be studied before entering a theological school, alongside grammar and rhetoric, known as the "Trivium." Therefore, logic held a very important position in medieval intellectual culture. The study and research of logic by medieval scholars were not only very widespread but also deeply explored. Occam was a logician and philosopher of the late Middle Ages (perhaps only William of Ockham's most famous successor in logic was Bradwardine [1300–1358]), and in a sense, Occam can be said to be the culmination of medieval logical thought and achievements. Therefore, authors can gain a relatively comprehensive understanding of medieval logic from his logical works. According to the author's understanding, medieval logic has some distinctive features. One feature is that medieval logic was formed and developed based on the study of commentaries on Aristotle's logical works. Therefore, it has a lot of discussions about Aristotle's logical thought, such as discussions on predicates like genus and species, discussions on propositions, discussions on syllogisms, and so on. Moreover, since the Latin translations of Aristotle's logical works entered Europe and became popular at different times, the early period (before the 12th century) was dominated by the Categories and the Topics, while later (after the mid-12th century) came the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, the Sophistical Refutations, and the Metaphysics. Therefore, medieval logic also had the distinction of "new logic" and "old logic." Another feature is that medieval logic placed great emphasis on linguistic analysis and developed some important theories, such as discussions on adcategories, discussions on terms, discussions on reference problems, and so on. Especially in the discussion on reference problems, it formed a unique theory in medieval logic. Not only was this theory absent in Aristotle's logic but it was also not adopted by later traditional logic. The third feature is that, like medieval philosophy, medieval logic was influenced by theology, so it contains many discussions about God. However, it should be noted that such content is generally not specific theological discussions; at most, it can be said that theological examples were used in logical discussions, and they were considered "self-evident" examples, still aiming to better explore logical problems. The fourth feature is that medieval logicians were generally also philosophers. Since logic did not separate from philosophy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, the discussion of logical problems was intertwined with philosophical problems, so the discussions of medieval logic often included philosophical problems, such as the problem of "being." This is not only a problem in logic research but also a fundamental problem in metaphysics.