The Eight Headings of Logic: A Historical Study

In the contemporary Iran, logical study suffers from a poverty of historical studies. Most prominently, the lack of an Islamic history of logic is an indication of this poverty. Writing such a history must start with surveying the transformation of Porphyry’s Introduction. The doctrines of this work not only changed functionally, but also developed and deepened in the Islamic period. It may be well observed that its development pivots on: 1) the addition of eightheadings, and 2) the addition of the prerequisites to understanding of the universals’ five-fold classification. Restricted to four logicians, namely Farabi, Avicenna, Ibn al-Tayyib, and Razi, the present study focuses on the first pivot, researches its historical background, studies the queries regarding it, and presents the attempts which were made to resolve these queries.