Exploring Topics in the History and Philosophy of Logic

While post-Fregean logicians tend to ignore or even denigrate the traditional logic of Aristotle and the Scholastics, new work in recent years has shown the viability of a renewed, extended, and strengthened logic of terms that shares fundamental features of the old syllogistic. A number of logicians, following the lead of Fred Sommers, have built just such a term logic. It is a system of formal logic that not only matches the expressive and inferential powers of today's standard logic, but surpasses it and is far simpler and more natural. This book aims to substantiate this claim by exhibiting just how the term logic can shed need light on a variety of challenges that face any system of formal logic.