Fallacies: Part 3, Book 4 of Summa Logicae

by William of Ockham, Richard Robinson (Translator)

Fallacies, by William of Ockham (AD 1287-1347), is the last book (Part 3, Book 4) of the Summa Logicae (Summary of Logic), a medieval textbook on syllogistic logic which is divided into three parts: terms, propositions and syllogisms, broadly speaking.

Fallacies is the medieval nominalistʼs response to Aristotleʼs Sophistical Refutations (De Sophisticis Elenchis). It treats of the fallacies of equivocation, amphibology, composition and division, accent, figure of speech, secundum quid et simpliciter, among others.

A Franciscan monk, philosopher and logician, William of Ockham is widely considered the father of nominalism. The Summa Logicae is his principal treatise on the subject. From a nominalistic point of view, it takes a fresh look at Aristotleʼs Categories, Interpretation and Topics as contained in the Organon; and it rejects the idea of universals as things having an independent existence outside the mind (as originally advanced by Plato).

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1323

About the author

William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham, or any of several other spellings, IPA: /ˈɒkəm/) (c. 1288 - c. 1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey, near East Horsley. He is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Averroes (ibn Rushd in the Middle East), to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although commonly known for Occam's Razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is April 10.

Reviews

[Richard Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published 702 years ago (in 1323) or thereabouts, in Latin, by the "father of nominalism." It corrects or readjusts Aritstotle's syllostic as contained in his Organon.