ABSTRACT

We investigate the evolution of Logic in the West in terms of paradigm-shifts. We analyse its origins in Ancient Greece, then its stages in Medieval and Modern Europe, and finally the advents of mathematical logic and logical pluralism. Here we propose that paradigms themselves should be understood by the kind of debates in which researchers engage, to wit, by the exemplary questions they choose to investigate or exemplary distinctions they use during a certain era. Some distinctions are crucial for theoretical construction, but are not represented in the theories they underline, or even remain inaccessible for a long time. Paradigm shifts coincide with the introduction of new distinctions that allow researchers to access the other crucial distinctions that had not been accessed previously: this movement occurs as a consequence of production conditions on the research, which includes the effort to solve operational problems accrued against one paradigm. Here, we propose that the prevalence of logical pluralism is the result of such process. Paradigm-shifts involve the nonaccumulativeness and incommensurability issues, which will be both analysed.