Towards a Social History of Medieval Logic

Abstract

This paper explains how a social history of medieval logic might be written. After contrasting it with the Standard Approach, centred on great logicians, problems and debates, it suggests a series of questions which social historians of logic might ask: when, where, by whom, how and why was logic studied in the Middle Ages? There follows a discussion of pathways to the social history of medieval logic: enhanced doxology, institutional history, logic in relation to other disciplines and cultural comparison. Finally, an objection is considered: logic is discovered, not invented, and so social explanations are inappropriate for its history. The objection is rejected because, whether logic is discovered or invented, historians of it must explain how individual logicians came to think and write as they did, and such explanations include social factors among others.