Logic (from the Greek λογική, logikē) refers to both the study of modes of reasoning (which are valid and which are fallacious) and the use of valid reasoning. In the latter sense, logic is used in most intellectual activities, including philosophy and science, but in the first sense, is primarily studied in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science. It examines general forms that arguments may take. In mathematics, it is the study of valid inferences within some formal language. Logic is also studied in argumentation theory.
Logic was studied in several ancient civilizations, including India, China, and Greece. In the west, logic was established as a formal discipline by Aristotle, who gave it a fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic was part of the classical trivium, which also included grammar and rhetoric.
Logic is often divided into three parts, inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning.
Read more about Logic: The Study of Logic, History
Famous quotes containing the word logic:
“The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society’s logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“Our argument ... will result, not upon logic by itself—though without logic we should never have got to this point—but upon the fortunate contingent fact that people who would take this logically possible view, after they had really imagined themselves in the other man’s position, are extremely rare.”
—Richard M. Hare (b. 1919)
“We want in every man a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must not be spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions and have a separate value, it is worthless.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)