7 - Logic and Deduction in the Middle Ages and the Modern Period

Summary

This chapter retraces the genealogical development of deduction in the Latin and Arabic medieval traditions and in the early modern period, and finally the emergence of mathematical logic in the nineteenth century. It is shown that dialogical conceptions of logic remained pervasive in the Latin medieval tradition, but that they coexisted with other, non-dialogical conceptualizations, in part because of the influence of Arabic logic. In the modern period, however, mentalistic conceptions of logic and deduction became increasingly prominent. The chapter thus explains why we (i.e. twenty-first-century philosophers) have by and large forgotten the dialogical roots of deduction.