Prior Analytics is Aristotle's work on deductive reasoning, specifically the syllogism. It is also part of his Organon, which is the instrument or manual of logical and scientific methods.
The Syllogism
The Prior Analytics represents the first formal study of logic. In it, Aristotle identifies valid and invalid forms of arguments called syllogisms. A syllogism is an argument consisting of three sentences: two premises and a conclusion. Each proposition of a syllogism is a categorical sentence which has a subject and a predicate connected by a verb. There are four different types of categorical sentences: universal affirmative (A), particular affirmative (I), universal negative (E) and particular negative (O).
- A - A belongs to all B
- I - A belongs to some B
- E - A does not belong to any B
- O - A does not belong to some B
External links
- The text of the Prior Analytics is available from the MIT classics archive.
- Prior Analytics, trans. by A. J. Jenkinson
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