Chapter

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science

Volume 5 of the series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science pp 216-241

Is Logic Empirical?

  • Hilary PutnamAffiliated withHarvard University

* Final gross prices may vary according to local VAT.

Get Access

Abstract

I want to begin by considering a case in which ‘necessary’ truths (or rather ‘truths’, turned out to be falsehoods: the case of Euclidean geometry. I then want to raise the question: could some of the ‘necessary truths’ of logic ever turn out to be false for empirical reasons? I shall argue that the answer to this question is in the affirmative, and that logic is, in a certain sense, a natural science.