Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

624 E. Jennifer Ashworth
to this account the names ‘Socrates’ and ‘Aristotle’ on the one hand and ‘Seine’
and ‘Brownie’ (the donkey) on the other have a different status. The former are
more properly singular terms than the latter even for those who are acquainted
with all of these individuals through time. Domingo de Soto rejected this consequence,
arguing that horses, trees and even rivers could enjoy a strong enough
identity, by virtue of the continuity of their forms and functions, to give a basis
for the application of one singular concept through time.
The topics of special quantifiers and the use of singular terms soon disappeared
from the logical literature, and the topic of the significatum of propositions ceased
to be a central issue, though it was touched on in later Thomistic accounts of
the object of judgement. 75 However, another topic to which Domingo de Soto
made a very important contribution was longer-lived. This was the classification
of signs, both linguistic and non-linguistic. In relation to the speaker, spoken
words were said to be instrumental signs, because they were used as instruments
of communication, and mental terms were said to be formal signs, because they
represented by their very nature. In relation to the things signified, spoken words
were said to be conventional signs, and mental terms were said to be natural
signs, since their signification did not depend on choice or convention. In the
various editions of his Summulae, Soto asked whether one should add a category
of customary signs, such as napkins on the table as a sign of lunch. In the end
he concluded that these signs were natural, albeit founded on a convention. 76
Soto’s classifications were elaborated by many later authors, including Sebastian
de Couto in the Coimbra commentary and John of St. Thomas (1589–1644) in
the seventeenth century. 77
3 THE NEW TEXTBOOKS
Outside Spain, work in the late medieval tradition came to an abrupt halt around
1530. No new independent treatises in the medieval style or commentaries on
Peter of Spain were written; the publication of works written during the first three
decades of the sixteenth century ceased, and the publication of such medieval
authors as Buridan, Heytesbury and Strode also ceased. Only in Spain did authors
75 See Nuchelmans, Late-Scholastic and Humanist Theories of the Proposition.
76 For discussion and references, see E. J. Ashworth, “The Doctrine of Signs in Some Early
Sixteenth-Century Spanish Logicians” in Estudios de Historia de la Lógica. Actas del II Simposio
de Historia de la Lógica, ed. Ignacio Angelelli and Angel d’Ors (Pamplona: Ediciones EUNATE,
1990), pp. 13–38; E. J. Ashworth, “Domingo de Soto (1494–1560) and the Doctrine of Signs”
in De Ortu Grammaticae: Studies in medieval grammar and linguistic theory in memory of
Jan Pinborg, ed. B. L. Bursill-Hall, Sten Ebbesen and Konrad Koerner (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1990), pp. 35–48.
77 For Sebastian de Couto, see John P. Doyle, trans., The Conimbricenses: Some Questions on
Signs (Milwaukee: Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2001); for John of St. Thomas [John
Poinsot], see John Deely, ed. and trans., Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985). For some corrections to
Deely’s discussion, see E. J. Ashworth, “The Historical Origins of John Poinsot’s Treatise on
Signs”, Semiotica 69 (1988), 129–147.