ARISTOTLES SYLLOGISTIC (Greek & Roman philosophy) (Hardcover)

~ Jan Lukasiewicz (Author)

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Text: German, English

Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: Facsimiles-Garl (March 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824069242
• ISBN-13: 978-0824069247
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,661,225 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bridge to Modern Understanding of Aristotle's Logic, March 15, 2009

By	Ole Anders (Coquina Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aristotle's Syllogistic, From the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic (Hardcover)

Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956) was learned in classical languages and gifted in mathematics. He earned a permanent niche in history of logic for the book under review and for his work in the 1920s on Stoic logic recounted in the 1961 book STOIC LOGIC by Benson Mates. He also earned a permanent niche in symbolic logic for creating the parenthesis-free notation somewhat unjustly known as "Polish Notation": it should be called "Lukasiewicz notation". In mathematical logic he is known for the classic 1930 paper co-authored with his former student Alfred Tarski (1901-1983). An English translation of this paper is still in print; it is article IV of Tarski's 1956 LOGIC, SEMANTICS, METAMATHEMATICS (second ed. 1983). Tarski, who studied under Lukasiewicz, is widely regarded as one of the top five logicians to date--the others being Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Boole (1815-1864), Frege (1848-1925), and Gödel (1906-1977).
In the book under review, Lukasiewicz reconstructs Aristotle's syllogistic as a system of modern symbolic logic modeled on the 1910 Russell-Whitehead PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA. This reconstruction inspired generations of logicians to go back and restudy their Aristotle, and it inspired generations of philosophers and classicists to go back and study their symbolic logic. There is no way to understand the historical development of interpretations of Aristotle's PRIOR ANALYTICS without reading this book. However, if your goal is to understand Aristotle's PRIOR ANALYTICS itself, read the 1989 translation and commentary by Robin Smith.