A survey is provided of the Soviet-Russian logician and historian Sof'ja A. Janovskaya (1896?1966). She wrote survey articles on logic, and also historical and philosophical essays on logic and on mathematics. A selected bibliography of her writings is appended.

Students often study logic on the assumption that it provides a normative guide to reasoning in English. In particular, they are taught to associate connectives like “and” with counterparts in Sentential Logic. English conditionals go over to formulas with → as principal connective. The well-known difficulties that arise from such translation are not emphasized. The result is the conviction that ordinary reasoning is faulty when discordant with the usual representation in standard logic. Psychologists are particularly susceptible to this attitude.

An eleventh-century Greek text, in which a fourth-century patristic text is discussed, gives an outline of a solution to the Liar Paradox. The eleventh-century text is probably the first medieval treatment of the Liar. Long passages from both texts are translated in this article. The solution to the Liar Paradox, which they entail, is analysed and compared with the results of modern scholarship on several Latin solutions to this paradox. It is found to be a solution, which bears some analogies (...) to contemporary game semantics. Further, an overview of other Byzantine scholia on the Liar Paradox is provided. The findings and the originality of the discussed solution to the Liar Paradox suggest a change in the way in which Byzantine Logic is traditionally regarded in contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

This paper discusses George Boole’s two distinct approaches to the explanatory relationship between logical and psychological theory. It is argued that, whereas in his first book he attributes a substantive role to psychology in the foundation of logical theory, in his second work he abandons that position in favour of a linguistically conceived foundation. The early Boole espoused a type of psychologism and later came to adopt a type of anti-psychologism. To appreciate this invites a far-reaching reassessment of his philosophy (...) of logic. (shrink)

De Morgan's Formal Logic, which was published on virtually the same day in 1847 as Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, contains a logic of complex terms (LCT) which has been sadly neglected. It is surprising to find that LCT contains almost a full theory of Boolean algebra. This paper will: (1) provide some background to LCT; (2) outline its main features; (3) point out some gaps in it; (4) compare it with Boole's algebra; (5) show that it is a (...) lattice-theoretical formulation of Boolean algebra; (6) discuss some issues of historical priority; and (7) conclude with the puzzle of LCT's lack of influence. (shrink)

The work of Hugh MacColl (1837–1909) suffered the same fate after his death as before it:despite being vaguely alluded to and in part even commended, on the whole it has remained an unknown quantity. Even worse, those of his ideas which have played a decisive role in the history of logic have been credited to his successors; this is especially the case with the definition of strict implication and the first formal development of formal modal logic. This paper takes an (...) initial step towards a rectification of this unfortunate misrepresentation, presenting a bibliography of MacColl’s most significant publications with particular regard to their reception. (shrink)