Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

Formal logic is mathematics, and there are philosophers like Wittgenstein that are very mathematical, but what they're really doing is mathematics - it's not talking about things that have affected computer science; it's mathematical logic.

There can never be surprises in logic.

Facts - behind them lies the whole fabric of deductive truth.

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus: Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore- Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second. This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Well it was not exactly a dissertation in logic, at least not the kind of logic you would find in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica for instance. It looked more like mathematics; no formalized language was used.

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.

We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

You should carefully study the Art of Reasoning, as it is what most people are very deficient in, and I know few things more disagreeable than to argue, or even converse with a man who has no idea of inductive and deductive philosophy.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use.

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

Inference is always an invasion of the unknown, a leap from the known.

Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

Mathematics is a language plus reasoning. It's like a language plus logic. Mathematics is a tool for reasoning.

Mathematics in general is fundamentally the science of self-evident things.

Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.

As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.