Work · Ancient Greek
Organon
The logical writings: categories, syllogistic, theory of demonstration.
Introduction
Organon (“tool”) is the name later commentators gave to Aristotle’s six logical works: the Categories, On Interpretation, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations. The title expresses a view of logic as the instrument of all the sciences rather than a science of its own. The Prior Analytics contain the first formal theory of inference, the syllogism; the Posterior Analytics ask what scientific proof requires; the Topics and Refutations deal with debate and fallacies. Through Boethius’ Latin translations – of which only those of the Categories and On Interpretation circulated widely before the twelfth century – the Organon became the basis of logic teaching in medieval schools and universities.
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Connections
Taken up in
- Isagoge (Introduction)c. 270 · Porphyry
- Approach to the Limits of Logicc. 1025 · Ibn Hazm
- Summa logicaec. 1323 · William of Ockham
- Summulae de dialecticac. 1340 · John Buridan
- Logic, or the Art of Thinking (Port-Royal Logic)1662 · Antoine Arnauld
- On Three-Valued Logic1920 · Jan Łukasiewicz
- Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic1951 · Jan Łukasiewicz
- The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation1958 · Chaïm Perelman
Criticized in
- The Refutation of the Logicians (al-Radd ʿala al-mantiqiyyin)c. 1310 · Ibn Taymiyya
- Reworking of Dialectic and Philosophyc. 1439 · Lorenzo Valla
- That Nothing Is Known1581 · Francisco Sanches
- Novum Organum1620 · Francis Bacon
- Begriffsschrift1879 · Gottlob Frege
More works by Aristotle
- c. 350 BCEOn the Soul (De anima)
- c. 350 BCEPhysics
- c. 340 BCEMetaphysics
- c. 340 BCENicomachean Ethics
- c. 335 BCEPoetics
- c. 335 BCEPolitics
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