A Short History of Logic

Abstract

Logic is concerned with reasoning and with establishing the validity of arguments. It allows conclusions to be deduced from premises according to logical rules, and the logical argument establishes the truth of the conclusion provided that the premises are true. The origins of logic are with the Greeks who were interested in the nature of truth. Aristotle developed syllogistic logic, where a syllogism consists of two premises and a conclusion. The Stoics developed an early form of propositional logic, where the assertibles (propositions) have a truth value such that at any time they are either true or false. Boole’s symbolic logic and its application to digital computing are discussed, and we consider Frege’s work on predicate logic.