Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

142 Ian Wilks
itself. The relationships between connectives can be very perspicuously expressed
by starting with a material account of the conditional. But this material account
is so counter-intuitive that it is not a natural starting point at all. A natural
starting point is some kind of relevance account, but on this the relationships
between connectives are much easier to mis-state and mis-construe.
Philosophers sometimes refer to very basic propositional logic, rather archly,
as “baby logic.” Well, it took philosophers about as long to develop a working
account of baby logic as it took physicists to develop a working account of relativity
theory. The written product of Abelard’s intense labours in the former area are
helpful in showing us why this was so.
PART 3: ABELARD’S CONTEMPORARIES
Among Abelard’s contemporaries, and in the immediate aftermath of his career,
no other figure emerges as having anything like his stature and influence within
the field of logic. On the other hand he did have rivals during his life, and they,
like he, established schools to continue the rivalry.
Among his rivals four names in particular emerge: Adam of Balsham, Alberic
of Paris, Gilbert of Poitiers and Robert of Melun. These were all younger contemporaries,
whose teaching careers were all launched before Abelard’s was ended.
According to current scholarly consensus, their adherents were, respectively, known
as the Parvipontani (or Adamitae), the Montani (or Albricani), the Porretani (or
Gilebertini) and the Melidunenses (or Robertini) [Iwakuma and Ebbesen, 1992, p.
174]. The adherents of Abelard were the Nominales. Gilbert is of course famous
in his own right as a philosopher and theologian, and cuts a substantial figure in
the twelfth century independently of his work in logic. Alberic and Robert, by
contrast, are best known through the literary products of their schools. The most
notable logical text to emerge from any of the schools of Abelard’s rivals is the Ars
Meliduna, a large work which provides a rich and varied conspectus of the views
of the Melidunenses; it has been described as “the climactic achievement of logic
in the second half of the twelfth century” [Jacobi, 1988, p. 245].
The above school classification represents the received scholarly view on the
matter. It is the product of extensive efforts over the past decades in assembling
the scattered and often fragmentary literary remains of the schools. Some rather
basic questions have arisen, such as whether the Montani were in fact the same
as the Albricani, and whether the Nominales were in fact the followers of Abelard
[Iwakuma and Ebbesen, 1992, p. 174]. That points as fundamental as these have
been under relatively recent discussion shows how incipient our knowledge of this
era in the history of logic is.
The textual evidence ranges from treatises and fragments of treatises to passing
references made by non-philosophical authors. The treatises themselves pose
substantial interpretative problems, having been composed both by and for those
immersed in the technical controversies of the day. They demand a knowledge
of context which they do little to provide. A school theorem is often presented