Thirteenth-Century Aristotelian Logic

Abstract

The aims of this paper are to show (i) that thirteenth-century Aristotelian logic (AL-13) is a logical tradition that considers Aristotelian logic (AL: the logical curriculum at the University of Paris, that is, Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Organon, Boethius’s De divisione and De topicis differentiis, and the anonymous Sex principia) as a system that is organized around the syllogistic argument; and (ii) that AL-13 can be characterized as the study of scientific method, of which formal analyses are a part but by no means the crucial one. I give a diachronic account of AL-13, with its continuities and ruptures, by looking at the general accounts of AL by Nicholas of Paris (1230s), Albert the Great (1250s), and Radulphus Brito (1290s).