Introduction

Is there such a thing as the history of infonnal logic? No books or articles explicitly on its history or historiography appear to exist. and many would even question whether infonnal logic is a well enough established. or even a well enough conceived, discipline to have a ·history'. Yet, even so, self-proclaimed exponents of infonnal logic and argumentation studies (such as ourselves) often refer to what they take to be historical predecessors, sometimes disagreeing with them, sometimes making use of their ideas and methods. And these historical references and studies do seem to be an important aspect of the study of infonnallogic and to help to define it as a subject.