Article published In:
Historiographia LinguisticaVol. 3:2 (1976) ► pp.179–201
The Study of Logic and Language in England in the Early 17th Century
Round the turn of the seventeenth century there was a revival of interest in and sympathy for scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy in the English universities. To some extent this meant a continuation of traditions that had never died out, but it also meant a conscious rejection of anti-Aristotelian doctrines like those of Ramus. Fortunately, we have good contemporary evidence of the sorts of authors recommended for study in the early 17th century in the Directions for a Student in the Universitie, attributed to Richard Holdsworth (1590–1649). Here we find a remarkable proportion of time given to the study of logic texts. An examination of the texts recommended, however, shows that they attempted little formal logic and were careless in what they did attempt. The primary interest of the authors of these books was in the philosophy of logic and language and in related epistemological and metaphysical questions. In this they show, if not the influence of Ramus, at least a parallel emphasis to that of some of the philosophies they rejected. Their philosophy of language is generally thoughtfully and coherently worked out, but it is not original. Indeed, it closely follows the doctrines of the medieval logicians and speculative grammarians, which philosophical doctrines can be identified with the principles delineated by Chomsky as characteristic of so-called Cartesian linguistics. The preservation of medieval philosophy of language combined with a relative lack of interest in medieval formal logic, however, has the effect of sharpening the emphasis in these works on what is innate in human beings and their use of language. This shift of interest rather than any real doctrinal change tends to distinguish these works from those of their medieval predecessors. In Edward Brerewood’s (c. 1565–1613) treatise on the diversity of languages (1614) we see these same philosophical doctrines combined with an interest that was new and not medieval, an interest in the historical and, in its way, empirical study of national languages themselves.
References
Arnauld, Antoine, and Pierre Nicole
1662 La Logique ou l’art de penser, Paris. Ch. Savreux et al. (Ed. critique par Pierre Clair et François Girbal. Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1965.)
Ashworth, E. J.
1974 Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period. Dordrecht/ Holland: D. Reidel. 
Bacon, Roger
1940 Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, 151. Ed. by Robert Steele. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bonfante, Giuliano
1955 “Una descrizione linguistica d’Europa del 1614”. Paideia 10:4.224–27.
Brerewood, Edward
(c. 1565–1613). 1614 Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the chiefe parts of the world. London: (W. Stansby for) I. Bill.
(c. 1565–1613). 1619 Elementa Logicae. London: I. Bill.
(c. 1565–1613). 1628 Tractatus quidam logici de Praedicabilibus et Praedicamentis. Oxford: W. Turner.
Burgersdijk, Franco (Burgersdicius
1590–1629). 1637 Institutionum Logicarum Libri Duo. Cambridge: Ex Academiae celeberrimae typographeo.
Bursill-Hall, G. L.
1972 Grammatica Speculativa of Thomas of Erfurt. London: Longman.
Chomsky, Noam
1966 Cartesian Linguistics. New York & London: Harper & Row.
Costello, William T.
1958 The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Crakanthorpe, Richard
(1567–1624). 1622 Logicae Libri Quinque. London: I. Legati, imp. I. Teage.
Curtis, Mark H.
1959 Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ferrer, Saint Vincent
(d. 1419). 1909 De suppositionibus dialecticis. Oeuvres de Saint Vincent Ferrier. Vol. I1, ed. by P. H. O. Fages. Paris: A. Picard & fils.
Geach, P(eter) T(homas)
1972 “History of the Corruptions of Logic”. Logic Matters, 44–61. Oxford: B. Blackwell.
Halliwell (-Philipps), James O(rchard
1820–89),ed. 1845 Autobiography… of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bart., during the Reigns of James I and Charles I. London: R. Bentley.
Hill, Christopher
1965 Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Holdsworth, Richard
(1590–1649). c.1648 Directions for a Student in the Universitie. Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 481. (Printed in part in Emmanuel College Magazine 11. 51–58, and 41. 1–10, 89–100.)
(1590–1649) 1651 The Valley of Vision. London: Matthew Simons
(1590–1649) 1661 Praelectiones Theologicae habitae in Collegio Greshamensi. Ed. by Richard Pearson. London: J. Flesher, pro. Gul. Wells & Rob. Scott.
Hooker, Richard
(1553?-1600). 1888 [1593] Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politic Ed. by John Keble, rev. by R. W. Church and F. Paget. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Howell, Wilbur Samuel
1956 Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Kearney, Hugh
1970 Scholars and Gentlemen. London: Faber & Faber.
Keckermann, Bartholomaeus
(1572–1609). 1613 Systema Systematum. Ed. by Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) Hanover: Apud Haeredes Guilielmi Antonii.
Luther, Martin
1912–1921 Tischreden. D. Martin Luthers Werke. 61 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau.
Ockham, William
1675 Summa totius logicae. Oxford: O. Walker.
Ong, Walter J.
1958 Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue; From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Perry, George Gresley
1908 “Crakanthorpe, Richard”. Dictionary of National Biography ed. by Leslie Stephen and Sydney Lee, vol.51.2–3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Salmon, Vivian
1966 “Language-Planning in Seventeenth-Century England; Its Context and Aims”. In Memory of J. R. Firth ed. by C. E. Bazell et al., 370–96. London: Longmans.
1972 The Works of Francis Lodwick. London: Longman.
Sanderson, Robert
(1587–1663). 1640 Logicae Artis Compendium. Oxford: J. Lichfield.
Seton, John
(c. 1498–1567). 1631 Dialectica annotationibus Petri Carteri. Cambridge: Ex Academiae typographeo.
Smiglecki, Martin (Smiglecius
1564–1618). 1634 Logica. Oxford: J. L(ichfield), imp. H. Crypps, E. Forrest & H. Curteyne.
Smith, Samuel
(1587–1620). 1618 Aditus ad Logicam. Oxford: J. Lichfield & I. Short, propter S. Lackson.
Spencer, Thomas
1628 The Art of Logick, Delivered in the Precepts of Aristotle and Ramus. London: J. Dawson, for N. Bourne.
Thomas, I.
1964 “Medieval Aftermath: Oxford Logic and Logicians of the Seventeenth Century”. Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus (=Oxford Historical Society, N.A., 16), 297–311. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Trentman, John A.
1965 “Vincent Ferrer on the Logician as Artifex Intellectualis
”. Franciscan Studies 251.322–37.
1975 “Speculative Grammar and Transformational Grammar: A comparison of philosophical presuppositions”. History of Linguistic Thought and Contemporary Linguistics ed. by Herman Parret, 279–301. Berlin W. d Gruyter.
Walton, Izaak
(1593–1683). 1678 The Life of Dr. Sanderson. London: printed for Richard Marriott. (Also in The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert Sc Robert Sanderson ed. with an introduction by George Saintsbury, London: Oxford Univ. Press 1927.)
Watts, Isaac
(1674–1748). 1786 [1724] Logick; Or, the Right use of reason in the inquiry after truth. London: printed for J. Buckland.
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Ashworth, E. J.
1988. Logic and language: Traditional logic. In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ► pp. 139 ff. 
Cassan, Elodie
2021. Introduction: Logic and Methodology in the Early Modern Period. Perspectives on Science 29:3 ► pp. 237 ff.
Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg & Eleonore Stump
1982. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy,
C. B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler & Jill Kraye
1988. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy,
Trentman, John A.
1976.
Commentary on “De Grammatico”: The historical-logical dimensions of a dialogue of St. Anselm’s. By Desmond Paul Henry. Historiographia Linguistica 3:1 ► pp. 98 ff.
Trentman, John A.
1982. Scholasticism in the seventeenth century. In The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ► pp. 818 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.