ABSTRACT

The topics to be discussed in this chapter can be approached from various points of view; the emphasis placed upon one topic as contrasted with another varies in accordance with the point of view adopted. Extension and intension, connota­ tion and denotation, classification and division, definition and description - all these are more or less interconnected topics, important not only for the formal logician but also for the purposes of scientific investigation. The traditional Logicians approached the discussion of these topics from the metaphysical standpoint of the classical doctrines of Aristotle’s works on logic, modified by the contributions of the Schoolmen. We shall not attempt to follow this treatment, and, with one exception,* we shall not keep to the traditional terminology. The topics to be discussed in this chapter are involved in all systematic thinking both at the level of com­ mon-sense reflection and of scientific thought.