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[Sep. 26th, 2007|06:03 pm] |
The way in which knowledge is related to the grounds upon which it is based is in fact not one and the same for all kinds of knowledge. That this is so, and that therefore a person ho has studied the nature of inference as such---let us call him a logician---can correctly judge the validity of an inference purely by attending to its form, although he has no special knowledge of its subject-matter, is a doctrine of Aristotle; but it is a delusion, although it is still believed by many very able persons who have been trained too exclusively in the Aristotelian logic and the logics that depend upon it for their cheif doctrines. (R.G.Collingwood, The idea of history, a random link).
I was still a very young man when a very distinguished visitor addressed an academic society on an archeological subject that came within my special field of studies. The point he made was new and revolutionary, and it was easy for me to see that he had proved it up to the hilt. I imagined ????. that so lucid and cogent a piece of reasononing must convince any hearere, even one who previously knew nothing about its subject-matter. I was at firsnt much disconcerted, but in the long run greatly instructed, by finding that the demonstration had quite failed to convince the (very learend and acute) logicians in the audience. |
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