22 - Logic

Summary

Medieval thinkers took a science to be an organized body of certain knowledge that might include theology, logic, and grammar as well as mathematics and physics. Medieval logic has to be seen against the background of the split of the Roman Empire into the Latin-speaking, Catholic West and the Greek-speaking, Orthodox East. The most important of Aristotle's logical works for the history of science is his Posterior Analytics. Roger Bacon's Summule was the first general textbook to contain a full section on the demonstrative syllogism. Medieval logic is characterized by a new technique, the analysis and solution of sophismata. Medieval logicians employed the notion of signification as their basic semantic notion. Supposition theory dealt with the subject and predicate terms in propositions, albeit in relation to other terms. Treatises on syncategoremata dealt with all these other terms, such as all, some, or not, that appear in a proposition and exercise some logical function.