Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

The Assimilation of Aristotelian and Arabic Logic up to the Later Thirteenth Century 315
twelfth century and the early thirteenth century some substantial and very important
anonymous treatises on logic appeared. One of these is the so called Ars
Meliduna, which contain very detailed discussions of terms and propositions. 80
Another interesting book is the Dialectica Monacensis, which is interesting since
the author obviously had access to all of Aristotle’s writings on logic. de Rijk
dates this work to the early years of the thirteenth century. The layout of Ars
Meliduna is very different from for example Peter of Spain’s famous Tractatus,
which later were called Summule Logicales, but around the turn of the century
logical treatises with the same structure and content as Peter’s work started to
appear. In the anonymous Summa Metenses all the parts of logic discussed by
Peter is present.
Gradually the logica nova worked its way into the the treatises and summaries of
logic in the first half of the thirteenth century. Before 1200 the textbooks foremost
included discussions of the logica vetus and some discussion of fallacies apart from
the new developments in the logica modernorum, but in the early decades of the
thirteenth century a standard format and some canonical topics had been settled
on, which included both the logica antiquorum and the logica modernorum. It is
these themes one can find in the famous mid-thirteenth century textbooks.
The most famous logic treatises and summaries from the thirteenth century
was written by William of Sherwood (d. 1272), Peter of Spain (d. 1277), Roger
Bacon (d. 1294) and Lambert of Auxerre (fl. 1250). Peter’s Tractatus is by far
the most famous and influential; fourteenth century as well as later logicians wrote
commentaries on it. William’s work, which is called Introduction to Logic, was also
very much read. Roger Bacon’s Summulae Dialectices and Lambert of Auxerre’s
Logica were not as influential, but they were also wildly read. All of them contain
the same material, but they differ slightly in how they treat this material. Their
terminology also differs. See the subsequent discussion below for more details.
On Propositions
The Tractatus is divided into twelve treatises. 81 The first is an introduction dealing
with the subject matter of dialectics (or logic) and the different kinds of propositions.
He defines dialectics in the following way:
Dialectics is the art that holds the road to the principles of all methods,
and therefore dialectics should be first in the acquisition of all the
sciences. 82
80See [de Rijk, 1967, I, Chapters 7–10].
81These twelve are: (I) On propositions (or statements); (II) On predicables; (III) On categories;
(IV) On syllogisms; (V) On topics or loci; (VI) On supposition; (VII) On fallacies; (VIII)
On relatives; (IX) On ampliation; (X) On appelation; (XI) On restriction; (XII) On distribution.
My treatment below will also be divided into these paragraphs; except towards the end where I
will treat (IX), (X), (XI) and (XII) under the heading of ‘supposition’. William of Sherwood’s
Introduction of Logic is divided into six chapters, namely (1) On statements; (2) On predicables;
(3) On syllogisms; (4) On topics; (5) On properties of terms; (6) On sophistical reasoning. Most
of the same material is, however, dealt with in these two books.
82Peter of Spain, Tractatus, I.1,4-6.