An Introduction To Logic

Traditionally logic has been concerned with the form of statements as opposed to their content. The aim is to produce a system in which it is possible to deduce true statements from other ‘true’ statements independently of what one is talking about, i.e. independently of the interpretation of the statements. The usual approach is to start with a set of axioms and rules of deduction and produce statements which are true if the axioms are true. Such statements are said to be analytically true, as opposed to statements which are regarded as true on the basis of experimental evidence in, e.g. sciences such as physics, biology, psychology, etc. A major philosophical aim in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to use logic to put mathematics on a rigorous footing.