Work · Rationalism
Logic, or the Art of Thinking (Port-Royal Logic)
Written with Pierre Nicole for the Port-Royal schools: a Cartesian logic of ideas, judgements, reasoning and method that distinguishes the comprehension of a general idea from its extension and remained a standard textbook into the nineteenth century.
Introduction
Arnauld and Pierre Nicole wrote the Logic, it is said, for the young Duc de Chevreuse; it appeared anonymously in Paris in 1662 and was revised until the fifth edition of 1683. Its four parts deal with ideas, judgements, reasoning and method. The authors take their theory of ideas from Descartes, their rules of method from his Discourse and from Pascal’s writing on the geometrical mind, and their syllogistic, simplified, from the scholastic tradition. Among its best-known doctrines is the distinction between the comprehension of a general idea and its extension; it also contains an early discussion of signs and of how to weigh the probability of events. As a textbook it was used in France and, in translation, in Britain into the nineteenth century.
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Connections
Builds on
- Organonc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
- Discourse on the Method1637 · René Descartes
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