Category:Logic

Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.

As a formal science, logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural language. The field of logic ranges from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialized analysis of reasoning using probability and to arguments involving causality. Logic is also commonly used today in argumentation theory. J. Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard, eds. Advances in Argumentation Theory and Research, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983 ISBN 0809310503, ISBN-13 978-0809310500

Traditionally, logic is studied as a branch of philosophy, one part of the classical trivium, which consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Since the mid-nineteenth century formal logic has been studied in the context of foundations of mathematics, where it was often called symbolic logic. In 1903 Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell attempted to establish logic formally as the cornerstone of mathematics with the publication of Principia Mathematica."Principia" Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematical to *56, Cambridge University Press, 1967, ISBN 0-521-62606-4 However, the system of Principia is no longer much used, having been largely supplanted by set theory. As the study of formal logic expanded, research no longer focused solely on foundational issues, and the study of several resulting areas of mathematics came to be called mathematical logic. The development of formal logic and its implementation in computing machinery is the foundation of computer science.