History of Logic is a seminar series organised by Francesco Pisano (in collaboration with Felice Masi and Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona) at the Department of Humanities (Faculty of Philosophy B. A. and M. A.) of the "Federico II" University of Naples, as part of the activities of Mechane - Laboratory for the Philosophy of Technology and SToNE - Laboratory for the Study of Neo-Kantianism. The seminar series takes place annually, with monthly talks (mostly online) on topics from the history of logic. The talks and other side-events are advertised through our newsletter. Go to the Contacts page to request the link for attending the online talks, as well as for subscribing to the newsletter. Check the Current Series page for this year's talks, while an overview of previous series is available at the Past Series page. Each two series, articles from (some of) the talks are expected to be collected in volumes. You will find at the Hosts and partners page the list of our hosting or partnering Institutions. At the Side events page you will instead find a list of satellite events connected to the seminar series itself.

The seminar series is inspired by some general principles. The starting point is the idea that historical knowledge is a powerful tool for understanding and advancing in all fields of science, including formal sciences. 

According to an established tradition, the study of the history of practices and concepts in the formal sciences is of secondary importance as compared to their understanding in abstract and purely theoretical terms. On the contrary, we believe that even the most technical and abstract notions or results are often best grasped by tracing their roots back to their often lost origins, and by following the steps of their evolution and development throughout decades, centuries, possibly millennia.

With respect to formal sciences in general, the case of logic poses some specific problems—related, for example, to the particular relationship between logical abstraction and cognitive operations, or between logical expression, writing, and computation, and finally with respect to history itself. It has been argued that logic has no history, because it is meant to reflect linguistic and/or ontological structures that are essentially immutable. From our point of view, studying the history of logic instead means gaining new and meaningful insights about these structures by interpreting them from a genealogical perspective. 

In our view, logic is thus inseparable from its history. A history which lies at the crossroads of many disciplines, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, cognitive sciences, anthropology, educational studies, and so on. In organising these seminar series, therefore, we hope to provide interested scholars with historical insights from experts in these fields.