An Introduction to LOGIC and SCIENTIFIC METHOD by MORRIS R. COHEN.
Originallu published in 1934. PREFACE: Though formal logic has in
recent times been the object of radi cal and spirited attacks from
many and diverse quarters, it con tinues, and will probably long
continue, to be one of the most fre quently given courses in
colleges and universities here and abroad. Nor need this be
surprising when we reflect that the most serious of the charges
against formal logic, those against the syllogism, are as old as
Aristotle, who seems to have been fully aware of them. But while
the realm of logic seems perfectly safe against the attacks from
without, there is a good deal of unhappy confusion within. Though
the content of almost all logic books follows even in many of the
illustrations the standard set by Aristotles Organon terms,
propositions, syllogisms and allied forms of inference, scientific
method, probability and fallacies there is a bewildering Babel of
tongues as to what logic is about. The different schools, the tradi
tional, the linguistic, the psychological, the epistemological, and
the mathematical, speak different languages, and each regards the
other as not really dealing with logic at all. No task is perhaps
so thankless, or invites so much abuse from all quarters, as that
of the mediator between hostile points of view. Nor is the
traditional distrust of the peacemaker in the intellectual realm
difficult to appreciate, since he so often substitutes an unclear
and inconsistent amalgam for points of view which at least have the
merit of a certain clarity. And yet no task is so essential,
especially for the beginner, when it is undertaken with the
objective of ad justing andsupplementing the claims of the
contending parties, and when it is accompanied by a refusal to
sacrifice clarity and rigor in thought. In so far as an elementary
text permits such a thing, the present text seeks to bring some
order into the confusion of tongues con cerning the subject matter
of logic. But the resolution of the con flicts between various
schools which it effects appears in the selec tion and presentation
of material, and not in extensive polemics against any school. The
book has been written with the conviction that logic is the
autonomous science o the objective though formal conditions of
valid inference. At the same time, its authors believe that the
aridity which is not always unjustly attributed to the study of
logic testifies to the unimaginative way logical principles have
been taught and misused. The present text aims to combine sound
logical doctrine with sound pedagogy, and to provide illus trative
material suggestive of the role of logic in every department of
thought. A text that would find a place for the realistic formalism
of Aristotle, the scientific penetration of Peirce, the pedagogical
soundness of Dewey, and the mathematical rigor of Russell this was
the ideal constantly present to the authors of this book. However
inadequately this ideal is embodied in the present text, the
embodiment is not devoid of positive doctrine, so presented that at
least partial justice is done to supplementary approaches to logic.
1. The traditional view of logic as the science of valid inference
has been consistently maintained, against all attempts to confuse
logic with psychology, where by the latter is meant the systematic
study of how the mind works. Logic, as thescience of the weight of
evidence in all fields, cannot be identified with the special
science of psychology. For such a special science can establish its
results only by using criteria of validity employed in other fields
as well...
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