Logic

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic. Logic, the study of reasoning and argument, first became a serious area of study in the 4th century BC through the work of Aristotle. He created a formal logical system, based on a type of argument called a syllogism, which remained in use for over two thousand years. In the nineteenth century the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege revolutionised logic, turning it into a discipline much like mathematics and capable of dealing with expressing and analysing nuanced arguments. His discoveries influenced the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the twentieth century and considerably aided the development of the electronic computer. Today logic is a subtle system with applications in fields as diverse as mathematics, philosophy, linguistics and artificial intelligence.With:A.C. GraylingProfessor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of LondonPeter MillicanGilbert Ryle Fellow in Philosophy at Hertford College at the University of OxfordRosanna KeefeSenior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk forwardslushradio4.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, in 1740 the Prussian King Frederick the Great wrote,
0:16.0	philosophers should be the teachers of the world and the teachers of princes.
0:20.0	They must think logically and we must act logically.
0:24.0	What it is to think logically has been one of the main concerns of thinkers since the time of the Babylonians.
0:29.0	In the 4th century BC Aristotle turned his attention to the subject and thereby founded the modern discipline of logic.
0:35.0	Aristotle's system was used by scholars for over 2000 years but in the 19th century was succeeded by something even more powerful in subtle.
0:42.0	Today we understand logic as the study of argument and the forms they may take.
0:47.0	It's widely used in fields from linguistics to cognitive science but above all logic is the vital tool without which computing would never have existed.
0:56.0	With me to discuss logic and its uses are AC Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck University of London,
1:03.0	Peter Milliken, Gilbert Royal Fellow in Philosophy at Hartford College at the University of Oxford,
1:08.0	and Rosanna Keefe, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
1:13.0	And in the Grayling before we go into the history of the subject, can you tell us what you mean by the word logic?
1:19.0	Logic is the science of a valid inference.
1:24.0	By inference I mean drawing conclusions from premises, from assumptions we make or information that we have,
1:31.0	and from it we try to deduce or induce a conclusion based on those premises.
1:37.0	And what logic does is it tries to understand the best ways of doing that, the valid forms of doing that.
1:45.0	So you're talking about reasoning and you're talking about validity, can you give us some examples of logical thought?
1:51.0	Well take a very simple example like this, all men immortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
1:58.0	That's a perfectly standard example of a deduction from the two premises that all men immortal and Socrates is a man,
2:04.0	you deduce that Socrates is mortal. Now you notice something rather interesting about it, that's a deduction.
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