The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic, edited by Catarina Dutilh Novaes and Stephen Read (St Andrews, Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Logic in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies), has just appeared with CUP (September 2016). This volume, the first dedicated and comprehensi
ve Companion to Medieval Logic, covers both the Latin and the Arabic traditions and shows that they were in fact sister traditions, which both arose against the background of a Hellenistic heritage and which influenced one another over the centuries. A series of chapters by both established and younger scholars covers the whole period including early and late developments, and offers new insights into this extremely rich period in the history of logic. The volume is divided into two parts, ‘Periods and Traditions’ and ‘Themes’, allowing readers to engage with the subject from both historical and more systematic perspectives. It will be a must-read for students and scholars of medieval philosophy, the history of logic, and the history of ideas.
The cover picture above shows ‘The Three Philosophers’ by Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; c. 1477/8–1510). Although recent research suggests that the three figures are Pythagoras with his teachers Thales and Pherecydes, historically it has been interpreted as representing the transmission of knowledge from the Greeks through the Arabs to modern times.