The development history of logic

Logic has a history of more than two thousand years, and it originated from three places, namely, ancient China, ancient Indian and ancient Greece.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the logical theory of "Xue Ming" and "Debate between Xue" appeared. Xun Zi Zheng Ming, especially Mo Jing, is a masterpiece, which systematically studies the objects of name, speech, argument and so on, and is rich in logical thoughts, but it has not formed an independent subject system because of being mixed with certain political and moral theories.

The logic theory of ancient India is called "cause", and "cause" refers to the basis and reason of reasoning; "Ming" refers to knowledge and wisdom. Dignā ga's "Theory of Righteousness Due to Ming Dynasty" and Sankara's "Theory of Righteousness Due to Ming Dynasty" are its representatives. For example, the form of reasoning is discussed and the "three-branch theory" is put forward. However, the reason for serving Buddhism failed to put aside the specific content of thinking and became a science in mathematical form.

Ancient Greek scholars made a comprehensive study of logic and formed an independent system theory. Aristotle's six logical works were collected by later generations as instrumental theory, which established the first logical system about lexical items in history. Aristotle is regarded as "the father of logic" by westerners.

After Aristotle, the Stoic School studied the logic of propositions. It is different from Aristotle's logic, but like Aristotle's logic, it belongs to deductive logic system and becomes the most important part of traditional logic together.

Since 1980s, "critical thinking" (meaning purposeful and self-calibrated judgment) has risen in the United States and Europe. This judgment is manifested in the interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference and explanation of the evidence, concepts, methods, standards or contexts on which the judgment is based.

Extended data

Set studies logical truth and logical terms, which are formal things, and have nothing to do with the specific content of reasoning propositions. In this sense, logic is a science of research form.

Although logical truth is an empty truth beyond concrete experience and logical words describe the formal structure of extracting concrete content, logical words play a very important role in people's cognitive and thinking activities and the construction of scientific theoretical knowledge.

In scientific theory, comprehensive proposition and analytical proposition have different functions. Although comprehensive propositions come from experience and convey empirical information, if there are only comprehensive propositions, then even if all propositions are true, what we get is only a collection of facts and truth, which only tells us what is true and cannot explain what is true.

When we doubt the truth of these propositions, we can't expect to get a reliable explanation from them. Moreover, the comprehensive proposition describes things related to past experience, from which we can not predict the future and speculate on unobservable events. Interpretation and prediction are the basic functions of scientific theory, that is to say, only comprehensive propositions cannot constitute scientific theory.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Logic