Organon Review

No quote from a fantasy book might be invoked more frequently than the Professor’s from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: “why don’t they teach logic at these schools?”  I deploy it often myself, and after my reflections about critical thinking, and how to teach it, I set out to instruct myself on logic.  Naturally, I turned to the ancient Greeks, and found a collection of Aristotle’s writings called Organon.  The collection itself is an artifact of the Middle Ages, when scholars were beginning to rediscover the Ancients, but it is composed of several of Aristotle’s books on logic: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Elenchi, and Introduction of Porphyry.

Part of why I chose to start my study of logic with Aristotle is because of the foundation he lays in Art of Rhetoric, which we reviewed previously, and which includes an excellent discussion of the application of logic to oral arguments and debates.  Interestingly, he separates rhetoric from dialectic and other, more rigorous applications of logic, since rhetoric is about convincing people, not about establishing truth, a distinction which modern politicians wholly embrace.  Regardless, if you have also already ready Art of Rhetoric, Categories will provide you will little new information, as it is essentially a book of definitions.  Unlike when certain philosophers go out of their way to redefine common concepts, however, when Aristotle does it, it serves a useful purpose and does not so much redefine as ensure that we all understand the full definition, and not the colloquial employment, of the terms involved in logic.  On Interpretation continues to define important logical concepts.

With Prior Analytics, we begin our true study of logic itself.  If you think that logic is some loose method of thinking rationally about a thing and coming to a conclusion based on facts, and therefore that there isn’t much to be written about it, then you clearly were not taught logic in school.  Aristotle spends two books of Prior Analytics talking about the core logical form – the syllogism – and all of its permutations and varieties, and how it can best be implemented.  The most basic syllogism is “if A is true, and B is true, then C must also be true,” but they can be far more complex and nuanced than that example suggests, and by the time Aristotle finishes exploring them, I think he’s managed to involve the entire alphabet.

The syllogism, in a sense, is the core of rationalist knowledge, the means by which a rationalist can argue and understand the universe.  Posterior Analytics extends that rationalist tool into the empirical realm, discussing how to invoke demonstration, discovery, and definition in syllogisms to establish a conclusion.  Again split into two books, Posterior Analytics, as the name suggests, is about proving an argument based on knowledge that you already possess, not about deriving a conclusion by rational means, as he covers in Prior Analytics.  There is also an excellent discussion of cause and effect.

Topics, then, begins to discuss the actual application of the concepts explicated in the previous books.  You would never know that Aristotle did not link these works together in the way Organon has them, because the books build upon each other and flow from one to the other as if they were designed to be taught in this fashion.  If I ever have to teach a class on logic, I will use Organon as my textbook and my curriculum.  Split into eight books, Topics covers definitions, types, property, comparisons, order, argument, dialectic, defense, solution, evidence, contraries…it is truly an eclectic collection to list out in this fashion, but it is all built around improving the construction of a logical argument, and it is most effective in doing so – just don’t expect to get anything out of it if you try to read through this quickly.

Nothing about Organon should be read quickly, not if you are genuinely using it as a way to improve your own logic.  Like a textbook, it will only be useful if you practice what it is attempting to teach you.  Aristotle doesn’t see logic just as a method of thinking; he sees it as a form of argument.  That is made abundantly clear in Sophistical Elenchi, which uses logic to fight logic, shows common mistakes in applied logic, and explains how to go about using the logical tools he’s provided in previous books to refute someone’s argument, either because it is not logical, or because its logic is improperly applied and therefore leads to an erroneous conclusion.

Some versions of Organon include a final book, The Introduction of Porphyry, which was written by the philosopher Porphyry sometime between 234 and 305 CE.  There is debate in the community about whether or not the introduction was intended especially as an introduction for Aristotle’s Categories, or if it was meant as Porphyry’s own introduction to logic.  Regardless, in the context of Organon I found it rather redundant with Aristotle’s works, as it largely retreads similar ground to the earlier books in Organon.

The implementation of logic is a lifelong effort, and no one book will miraculously make you a critical thinker.  Critical thought, and logic as a type of critical thinking, require dedicated, persistent work to enact in your everyday thinking patterns.  If there is one book that will help you on that journey, though, it is Organon, and I highly recommend that you work your way through a copy.  Really, after reading it, it’s clear that is the only logical decision.