The stark contrast between faith and rationality – religion and philosophy – convention and curiosity – is Logic. Although it is often confused with reasoning, logic is the study of correct reasoning, especially as it involves the drawing of inferences. This is the methodology early philosophers concurred with to seek their answers, justify and verify them. It’s when their assertions fell short of being called mere imagination that they began, in a systematical way, to regard their own rational arguments as either a fallacy or a verity.
The root of logic, an inference, is a rule-governed step from one or more propositions, called premises, to a new proposition, called the conclusion. A rule of inference is said to be truth-preserving if the conclusion derived from the application of the rule is true when the premise is true. Inferences can be deductive or valid which leads to two forms of logic for both cases. The classical form, presented yet again by Aristotle, known as syllogism – which will be elaborated on further ahead – remained the frontline of reasoning in philosophy for as long as until the 19th century when mathematical logic evolved and created new fields of logic.
