William Minto

Logic, Inductive And Deductive William Minto

The question has sometimes been asked, Where should we begin in Logic? Particularly within the present century has this difficulty been felt, when the study of Logic has been revived and made intricate by the different purposes of its cultivators. Where did the founder of Logic begin? Where did Aristotle begin? This seems to be the simplest way of settling where we should begin, for the system shaped by Aristotle is still the trunk of the tree, though there have been so many offshoots from the old stump and so many parasitic plants have wound themselves round it that Logic is now almost as tangled a growth as the Yews of Borrowdale-An intertwisted mass of fibres serpentineUpcoiling and inveterately convolved. It used to be said that Logic had remained for two thousand years precisely as Aristotle left it. It was an example of a science or art perfected at one stroke by the genius of its first inventor. The bewildered student must often wish that this were so: it is only superficially true. Much of Aristotle's nomenclature and his central formulæ have been retained, but they have been very variously supplemented and interpreted to very different purposes-often to no purpose at all.