23 November 2025

On Logical Analysis (1800-1949)

"With the synthesis of every new concept in the aggregation of coordinate characteristics the extensive or complex distinctness is increased; with the further analysis of concepts in the series of subordinate characteristics the intensive or deep distinctness is increased. The latter kind of distinctness, as it necessarily serves the thoroughness and conclusiveness of cognition, is therefore mainly the business of philosophy and is carried farthest especially in metaphysical investigations." (Immanuel Kant, "Logic", 1800)

"A successful attempt to express logical propositions by symbols, the laws of whose combinations should be founded upon the laws of the mental processes which they represent, would, so far, be a step towards a philosophical language." (George Boole, "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic", 1847)

"Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete; it is a mean cut of from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes." (Sir William Hamilton, "Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic: 6th Lecture on Metaphysics", 1858)

"In science nothing capable of proof ought to be accepted without proof. Though this demand seems so reasonable yet I cannot regard it as having been met even in […] that part of logic which deals with the theory of numbers. In speaking of arithmetic" (algebra, analysis) as a part of logic I mean to imply that I consider the number concept entirely independent of the notions of intuition of space and time, that I consider it an immediate result from the laws of thought." (Richard Dedekind, "Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?", 1888)

 "The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself." (Bertrand Russell, "Principles of Mathematics", 1903)

"A definition is the logical analysis of a predicate in general terms. It has two branches, the one asserting that the definitum is applicable to whatever there may be to which the definition is applicable; the other" (which ordinarily has several clauses), that the definition is applicable to whatever there may be to which the definitum is applicable. A definition does not assert that anything exists." (Charles S Peirce, "New Elements" ["Kaina stoiceia"], 1904)

"In fact, the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new." (Bertrand Russell,"Our Knowledge of the External World", 1914)


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