Excerpt from An Elementary Handbook of Logic The present volume makes no pretensions to being anything more than is implied in its title. It is elementary, and it is a handbook. Being elementary, it omits all the subtler questions which frequently find a place in extended treatises on Logic. Being a handbook, it is not designed for private study, but for use in the classroom. It does not attempt to provide a detailed explanation of the various topics as they come up for study. This has been left to the teacher, whose exposition of the doctrine would probably be embarrassed and rendered less effective if his pupils were confronted with long and unnecessary comments in the text. A special effort has been made to combine clearness with brevity, so that once the student has received the teacher's explanation, he may have a lucid epitome which will enable him to recall with facility all the essential principles of Logic. The volume departs in two particulars from the common method of treatment. First, a distinction has been drawn between the Act of Inference and the Process of Inference, and a separate chapter has been devoted to each. This will probably be found to simplify the explanation of Reasoning and to bring out the essential identity of form which underlies the various types of argument. Secondly, the hypothesis of the Distribution of the Predicate has been abandoned. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from An Elementary Handbook of Logic The volume departs in two particulars from the common method of treatment. First, a distinction has been drawn between the Act of Inference and the Process of Inference, and a separate chapter has been devoted to each. This will probably be found to simplify the explanation of Reasoning and to bring out the essential identity of form which underlies the various types of argument. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Father Toohey's manual is an excellent text-book for the classrooms of academics, colleges and seminaries, and it would be advisable for all teachers of logic to consider its advantages before deciding on the book they will use in their courses of next year. It is brief and clear. It avoids diffuseness and jejuneness; and while covering the entire subject in a way quite sufficient for the student's needs, it leaves full freedom to the teacher for personal initiative and development. It is essentially a textbook for classroom work, written by the professor of logic in Georgetown University, with whom the science of logic, long before he began to teach it, had been a hobby. It is designed especially to meet the difficulties, requirements and turn of mind of American students. A minute outline of chapters and an exhaustive index, covering thirteen pages, of topics, facilitate reference, which is made still easier by a judicious employment of black-faced type for definitions when they first occur, and by the use of numbers for paragraphs, to which the student is constantly sent back, as occasion requires. Throughout the volume's 241 pages extreme care has been taken with the wording of the text, and the examples, old and new, serve as excellent illustrations. The subject-matter, which it has been the fashion to consider cut and dried and stereotyped beyond the possibility of change, has an element of novelty which is refreshing. The laws of thought are, of course, enunciated as heretofore, but on the explanation of them Father Toohey has not feared to show considerable originality. These divergences from stock statements stimulate discussion, clear away inconsistencies and on further reflection commend themselves with growing insistence. Such, for example, are the distinction between the act and process of inference, the treatment of the predicables and categories, the chapter on education and the remarks on the modal proposition. The most distinctive parts of the book are the chapters which treat of the categorical syllogism. The author has found that his new theory simplifies the subject in a remarkable way for the student. The explanation of fallacies, which was written with the distinct purpose of giving a name and a description to the methods of attack made on the Church, is very valuable; and the discussion of the author's views on the distribution of the predicate, to say the least, challenges serious attention. The book has already been adopted in several higher institutions of learning. -America, Volume 19 [1918]

Now much revised since its first appearance in 1941, this book, despite its brevity, is notable for its scope and rigor. It provides a single strand of simple techniques for the central business of modern logic. Basic formal concepts are explained, the paraphrasing of words into symbols is treated at some length, and a testing procedure is given for truth-function logic along with a complete proof procedure for the logic of quantifiers. Fully one third of this revised edition is new, and presents a nearly complete turnover in crucial techniques of testing and proving, some change of notation, and some updating of terminology. The study is intended primarily as a convenient encapsulation of minimum essentials, but concludes by giving brief glimpses of further matters.