Analysis, Critique and Improvement of the Rescher’s Narrative of the Logic in the Islamic Period

Nicholas Rescher is one of the pioneers among Western scholars who has studied and written about the logic in the Islamic period. He distinguishes four main pivots for describing the situation of logic in the Islamic period: 1. Choosing the title of Arabic logic for naming the logic of the Islamic period; 2. Creating an East-West dichotomy to separate the post-Avicenna logicians; 3. Loss of the logic studies after the tenth century; 4. Listing the names of logicians and their works. In this paper, the model of Rescher’s research in the study of the logic in the Islamic period is examined. The most important criticisms of his narrative of this period are as follows: 1. Rescher’s reasons for preferring the title of Arabic logic to the logic of the Islamic period are not justified; 2. Unlike Rescher, by Western logicians, Ibn Sīnā did not mean the thinkers of Baghdad school and their followers, rather, the Greek philosophers and those who were mere followers of them. The basis for Rescher’s East-West dichotomy of post- Avicenna logicians is also the consistency between the philosophical and logical ideas of these individuals, which has led to the misclassification of some Eastern logicians in the Western category and vice versa; 3. Due to his lack of access to original sources and manuscripts, as well as his ignorance of the studies of logic in non-logical works such as philosophy and principles of Islamic jurisprudence, Rescher mistakenly thought that the study of logic had been forgotten after the tenth century; 4. Rescher’s account of the names and number of works of logicians also suffer from some shortcomings.