Introduction

Medieval logic was a philosophical logic, closely geared to philosophical themes. Under some circumstances the promise of the sort of definitive conclusions which formal logical analysis would provide concerning the sense and validity of medieval logical and philosophical theses seems to be impossible of fulfilment. Fortunately it happens that there exists a system of modern formal logic, unfamiliar to many logicians and philosophers. There is a clear and salient contrast between the state of the history of medieval philosophy and that of the history of medieval logic. The first is an already-venerable discipline, and has customarily been the province of thinkers who themselves are part of the post-medieval phase of philosophising, literary in mode, and remote in style and content from the logically-structured and economically-expressed output of the medievals. The second, the history of medieval logic, is a comparatively new study, which according to the avowals of its own practitioners is still in an elementary and primitive state.