4 - Logic in the seventeenth century preliminary remarks and the constituents of the proposition

Summary

MAIN CURRENTS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LOGIC

Until fairly recently, the study of the development of logic in the seventeeth Century suffered from a certain lack of comprehensiveness, depth, and historical sensitivity. Yet, there can be little doubt that during this period some remarkable changes in the conception of that discipline took place. Indeed, it would be misleading to treat the seventeenth century as a kind of organic unit in the history of logic. In point of fact, there is a marked discontinuity between the principal features of the varieties of viewing logic that were predominant in roughly the first half. The century and the way of viewing logicthat came to the fore in the second half.

The first half of the seventeenth century may becharacterised by a general tendency to continue teaching logic in one of the versions that had been handed down from the remote or near past. Among those traditional forms of logic, Artistotelianism, either of a scholastic type or more independent of mediaeval interpretations, maintained its strong position. The scholastic type of Aristotelianism, elaborated in the spirit of such influential thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus or adapted to the ideals of the Counter-Reformation by members of the Jesuit order, flourished especially in Roman Catholic countries but had considerable impact on the teaching of logic in the other parts of Europe as well. Authritative expositions of orthodox Thomistic doctrines are the treatises on logic included in the Collegium Complutense philosophicum of 1624 and in the Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus published by the Portuguese Dominican John of St. Thomas in 1634, while the part dealing with logic in Johannes Poncius's Integer Philosophiae cursus ad mentem Scoti of 1643 is a good specimen of the Scotist approach.