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WorkThomas Reid

A Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic, with Remarks

A harsh portrait of Aristotle, a patient tour of his syllogisms, and a verdict in favour of Bacon's induction.

by Thomas Reid85 passages held

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First published
(aged 64)
Original language
English

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Overview

In 1774 the Scottish judge Henry Home, Lord Kames, brought out his Sketches of the History of Man, and its second volume carried some seventy pages by Reid arguing that Aristotle's logic, followed for nearly two thousand years, had discovered almost nothing. Reid had taught logic every year at Glasgow since 1764. He opens with a harsh portrait of Aristotle as a genius who wanted fame more than truth and may have written obscurely on purpose, then works through the logical writings in turn, from the introduction by Porphyry, a third-century commentator, to the syllogism with its figures and moods. The case is made in the closing remarks: the syllogism, Reid argues, only draws out what its premises already contain; it finds nothing new, and it has no grip on the probable reasoning on which most knowledge depends. He grants it the kind of admiration people give the pyramids of Egypt — a great work of human genius, and of little use — and credits real progress to Francis Bacon, whose method of induction, he says, had produced laboratories and observatories where the syllogism had produced only disputes. In 2005 the piece was reprinted in the Edinburgh Edition of Reid's works, in the volume that also holds the notes of his logic lectures.

Key concepts

What are Porphyry's five predicables?

Genus, species, difference, property and accident: the five ways something can be said of a subject. Porphyry set them out in the introduction he wrote to Aristotle's Categories, holding that the categories cannot be understood without them. Reid reports that he pursues every agreement and difference among the five at great length, and treats the scheme as an aid to division and definition rather than to discovery.

What are the figures and moods of the syllogism?

The ways a categorical syllogism can be built. The figure depends on where the middle term, shared by both premises, stands in each: as subject or as predicate. The mood depends on whether each proposition is universal or particular, affirmative or negative. Aristotle worked out which combinations yield a valid conclusion, and Reid follows the first Analytics through conversion, figures and moods before judging what the whole achieves.

Why does Reid think the syllogism cannot advance knowledge?

Because a valid conclusion is already contained in its premises: the syllogism can set out what is known in good order, but it cannot find anything new. Nor has it any hold on probable reasoning, on which most knowledge depends. Reid therefore judges categorical syllogism fitter for scholastic litigation than for real improvement in knowledge, while honouring it as a great effort of human genius.

What is the difference between defining a word and defining a thing?

Logicians called the first a lexicographer's office and the second the grand work of a philosopher: declaring a thing's essence by genus and specific difference. Reid reverses the ranking. Of the things God made we see only the outside, so their real essence cannot be defined; what can be defined is the meaning of a word, and doing that well, as Locke showed, removes much confusion from philosophy.

What are Bacon's idols of the understanding?

The prejudices or biases of the mind that cause false judgment, which Francis Bacon was, Reid thinks, the first to reduce to a system. Some later writers of logic had taken them into their systems; Reid wants them handled more fully and illustrated with real examples. He ranks this beside the method of induction among Bacon's gifts to logic.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What the Syllogism Cannot Find

Can an art of reasoning that only unfolds what its premises already hold teach anyone something new? The remarks answer no, and grant the syllogism the admiration owed to the pyramids.

Reid follows the Analytics through conversion, figures and moods patiently enough, but his verdict is that categorical syllogism is better fitted to scholastic litigation than to real improvement in knowledge. Its conclusions lie inside its premises, and it has no hold on the probable reasoning on which most knowledge depends. Yet he refuses the fashionable contempt that followed centuries of excessive admiration. The predicaments, the predicables and the rules of syllogism are uncommon efforts of human genius, to be venerated as antiquities, as people venerate the pyramids of Egypt and the wall of China while calling them useless burdens on the earth.

  • logic
  • syllogism
  • syllogistic reasoning
  • reasoning
  • aristotelian logic
  • propositions
  • conversion of propositions
  • validity
  • proof
  • demonstration
  • fallacies
  • argumentation
  • dialectic

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Genus, Category and Definition

Does a definition declare what a thing is, or only what a word means? The account of Porphyry and the Categories ends on Locke's side, with words, against Aristotle's essences.

Porphyry's five words, genus, species, difference, property and accident, and Aristotle's categories were meant to sort everything that can be said. Reid allows the scheme some use for division, but not its ambition. A definition in Aristotle's sense declares a thing's essence by genus and specific difference; yet of the things God made we see only the outside, so their real essence cannot be defined, and every definition must end in words that need none. What remains is defining words, the office logicians left to lexicographers, and there Locke's principles on definition and the abuse of words carry conviction.

  • classification
  • definition
  • predication
  • categories
  • universals
  • language

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Bacon's Induction and First Principles

If the syllogism cannot advance knowledge, what is a logic still good for? The closing section points to Bacon's induction, to separating first principles from what needs proof, and to training judgment.

After two thousand years of syllogisms, Reid writes, Bacon proposed induction, and Newton kept its rules in view in the Principia and the Optics. Bacon was also the first to systematise the idols, the biases behind false judgment. Every science stays unformed until its first principles are marked off from what needs proof; the ancients assumed too many, and Descartes tried to prove his faculties trustworthy with those same faculties. Logic, Reid adds, is taught too early, like a creed, and most people remain children in understanding all their days, carried along by a leader, a party or the multitude.

  • induction
  • scientific method
  • first principles
  • method
  • epistemology
  • truth
  • education
  • history of philosophy
  • history of logic
  • aristotle
  • examples

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Within this work

passages held
85
distinct concepts
137
by passages held, corpus-wide
#543

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “logic” and “syllogism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
logicsyllogism12
logicreasoning6
classificationlogic5
classificationpredication4
logicpredication4
logicsyllogistic reasoning4
definitionlanguage3
classificationdefinition2
definitionlogic2
definitionpredication2
reasoningsyllogism2
classificationsyllogism1
languagelogic1
languagereasoning1
languagesyllogism1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1748 An Essay on Quantity

    A sixteen-page paper, published sixteen years before Reid's first book, the Inquiry into the Human Mind.

     EN
  2. 1764 An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense

    Reid's first book briefly states the case against the theory of ideas that his two later volumes of Essays argue at length.

     EN
  3. 1774 A Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic, with Remarks you are here EN
  4. 1785 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

    The book many scholars now rank as Reid's greatest, and the one that sets out his theory of knowledge in full.

     EN
  5. 1788 Essays on the Active Powers of Man

    Companion to the Intellectual Powers, turning from how we know to how we act; the last of Reid's books.

     EN
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