Introductory Logic

by Douglas J. Wilson, James B. Nance

Designed for eighth grade and up, these lessons cover logical statements, fallacies, syllogisms, and many other elements. This course is a thorough introduction and serves as both a self-contained course as well as a preparatory course for more advanced studies.

Genres: Logic, Philosophy, Nonfiction

119 pages, Spiral-bound

First published June 1, 1997

About the author

Most of this author's works are written under the name Douglas Wilson.

Reviews

[Jaymes Dunlap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had this book from childhood I never truly started or finished (also inheriting the answer key). Although Christian-oriented, the author does a decent job separating belief from logic, and even acknowledges where belief and logic may appear or actually conflict. The only down side is I wish there were more examples both in given and practice form, especially around the second half of the Syllogism and Validity section.

[Chris Comis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good resource for beginning logic teachers and students. Used this for a home-school co-op I taught at. The kids really seemed to get into it as well.

[John Martindale · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an introduction to logic, I find it interesting that it doesn't even mention the existence of inductive logic or addresses analyzing and evaluating actual arguments that occur in the normal world. The intro just quickly hops from Aristotle's laws of thought, to the square of opposition (with no mention of Existential problem or Boolean alternative) and the rest is spent on the Syllogism, with some informal fallacies tacked on at the end.
I didn't care for the the overly Christiany, cheesy and sometimes confusing and oddly worded examples and questions.
Concerning the informal fallacies, believe it or not, while talking about circular reasoning fallacy, he mentions circular reason is fine and isn't a fallacy when one uses circular reason to believe the bible is our absolute authority. WHAT THA!? I won't get started...
There isn't really any mention how any of this Aristotelian logic pertains to any arguments we'd see or make in real life. One might he was finally going to address this, in the section on translating normal arguments to a categorical syllogism. But this is when he goes into conversion, obversion and contraposition which ended up being the most confusing and hopelessly convoluted selection in the book.
His examples of Enthymemes, were bible verses, so one knew from the outset that all would be valid, but this also meant one never go to see any example of an enthymeme resulting in an invalid syllogism. One even wondered if a Enthymeme could result in an invalid form, and if it can't, it is pointless to go to the work to turn one liners into syllogisms.

But with these complaints out of the way, as far as an introduction to Aristotelian categorical syllogism, most of book was pretty easy to follow and it moved along at a good pace. Before starting Nance's introduction, I was going through Norman Geisler's introduction to Logic which on top of being embarrassingly Christiany, was horribly written. Geisler just swiftly vomited multitudes of poorly explained terms and concepts, which left one feeling hopelessly lost in the confusing deluge. So in comparison to Geisler, Nance was a breath of fresh air, I was able to understand and follow a good deal.

[Carleton Raisbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff. It has taught me that I should be more careful to create sound arguments, since fallacies are easy to commit, and I don't want to commit fallacies. I found it quite hard sometimes because Its a bit of a brain teaser, and I find some brain teasers hard.