An Introduction to LOGIC and SCIENTIFIC METHOD BY MORRIS R. COHEN
Department of Philosophy, College of the City of New York AND
ERNEST NAGEL Department of Philosophy, Columbia University
HARCOURT, BRACE WORLD, INC. NEW YORK AND BURLINGAME COPYRIGHT,
1934, BY EARCOTJRT, BRACE WORLD, INC, All rights reserved,
including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
any form. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 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 ofthe 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 and supplementing 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 Iv PREFACE 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 the science 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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