F. C. S. SCHILLER
own study of logic came to an abrupt end as soon as I had secured a passing mark on Jevons, I shall not attempt to express an opinion upon the value of Schiller's "Formal Logic", but will instead quote from the review of the volume by Professor Dewey of Columbia.[1]
In substance, the volume (a large octavo of about four hundred pages) is an unrelenting, dogged pursuit of the traditional logic, chapter by chapter, section by section. Not a single doctrine, nor, I think, a single distinction of the official textbooks escapes Schiller's demolishing hand. . . . A vital and wholesome sense of the realities of actual thinking pervades the whole book; it supplies the background against which the criticisms of formal doctrine are projected. Mr. Schiller brings out, in case after case, with a cumulative effect which is fairly deadly, that at the crucial point each formal distinction is saved from complete meaninglessness only by an unacknowledged and surreptitious appeal to some matter of context, need, aim, and use. Why not, then, frankly recognize the indispensableness of such volitional and emotional factors, and instead of pretending to a logic that excludes them, build up a logic that corresponds to human intellectual endeavor and achievement. It is difficult to see how even the most hardened devotee of a purely theoretical intellectualism can lay down the book without such questions haunting him. . . .
- ↑ The Independent. Schiller's "Formal Logic" gave rise to much controversy. See for instance Mind, vol. 23, p. 1, 398, 558. One critic called it "a sympathetic appreciation of all known logical fallacies."
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