AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO 'LOGIC OF LANGUAGE'
William of Ockham is an important historical figure in the 14th century European scene; he was/is a cogent philosopher, and made important contributions to theology and political theory-- was a kind of "Morning Star of the Reformation" while remaining Catholic to dying-day.
The works of Ockham are beginning to appear in English from the difficult Latin in which Ockham wrote, and indeed both the Latin and 'English' versions of his work are on Internet and in bound-book more obtainable than ever before.
Ockham's SUMMA ON LOGIC actually obtains in three (3) Latin volumes; this second translation by Freddoso and Schuurman takes on the second of this series-- Ockham's contribution to the theory-of-propositions. Here we witness Ockham's innovative slant toward tackling logic as emanating from language-- of course from Latin-language by Ockham's conception-- but by extension to all language. Ockham gives inaugural address to the topic of modal logic-- i.e. to those propositions which per se are not fully validated or invalidated but which may be 'satisfied as may-be' in discourse. Ockham goes then to derive overview for propositions of various permutations of expression, for the categoricals, hypotheticals, privative, disjunctive, tense-logical, causal and negative expressions.
While using a method utilizing both logical demonstration AND appeal to The Philosopher (Aristotle), Ockham's contribution amounts to a fundamental re-working of the contributions of the ancients-- the Greek heritage, and the subsequence in Church Patristics on logic. This innovation and rigor was heralding not only a 'reformation' of spiritedness in Ockham's late Medieval period, but had intellectual progeny later and modernly, in the profound appreciation by C.S. Peirce and the 20th century movement known as Analytic Philosophy.
I am reading this second volume of SUMMA LOGICAE in a total-systems/Schleiermacherian-hermeneutic way, first with a molar over-read, to grasp gist, then meditatively and hyper-hyper-closely in conjunction with the Latin available online from German BIBLIOTECHA LATINA. I am also in this quest for profoundest understanding trying to apply the logic of language in MY first-linguistics-- "all the -isms in Kentucky Hill-Billy-ism"-- and the "African" I hear waiting in bus-stops and beside me in cheapissimo restaurants, and the Spanish and Arabic and Slavic of this Metro (Louisville, KY) the same-- as potential 'logics' of a highly complexed and proteanly-birthed provenance. This I think comes from none other than referent and appreciation of Ockham and this work-- as well as SUMMA LOGICA I -- and I await the appearance anywhere/anyhow of volume III of this-- in the Latin & the English!
