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This stimulating textbook of logic, specified as a student's edition, is an issue in the Century Philosophy Series, edited by Sterling P. Lamprecht. Dr. Holmes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College. The aim he has set for the text is indicated in this passage from the preface: “Logic is a subject through which one should develop a sense for the formal aspect of thought, not a discipline in which he spends most of his time doing exercises. Logic is fascinating. It should give a feeling for structure; as a game, not a chore.”
Thus emphasis on the structural aspect is evident in the four textual divisions: The Structure of an Argument; The Structure of Experimental Procedure; The Structure of Deductive Systems; and The Structure of Mature Thought. In the first may be found matter expounding The Proposition; the nature of the syllogism, covering in the range of its developmental history progressions from the Ptolemaic view of classes to later interpretative structures; and a further expository chapter entitled The Logician's Molecules and How They Are Arranged. There are three chapters in Part II: The Detective and His Art; Superstitions and the Scientific Method; and The Scientist and the Picture Puzzle. The section on deductive systems is presented under two headings: The Copernican System of Classes, and A Philosophy of Life as a Deductive System. The last section accounts for maturation processes, both historically and individually, which in thinking make for a closer appraisal of external reality. A final chapter deals with Logic and the History of Philosophy. There are four appendices: Twenty-five Brain Teasers; Problems; Table of Immediate Inferences; and Answers to Brain Teasers.
It is a work offering a most useful presentation of the development, methods, and objectives of logic and scientific thought as applied to both the disciplines of human knowledge and the demands of conscious attention to the “thought” requisites in daily experience