Pure logic as theoretical science

pp. 33-91

in: Edmund Husserl, Introduction to logic and theory of knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

It immediately follows from these considerations that the discipline of logic can be defined in broader and narrower ways. Its definition as theory of an art constitutes the broadest and, on the whole, most primitive concept of logic. It is also presently the most widespread. Indeed, a series of prominent logicians defend even the thesis that only the definition of logic as theory of the art of knowledge is admissible, only a logic understood as a theory of an art exists in its own right in relation to psychology and metaphysics. We shall not yet go into this controversial issue for the time being. What we can, however, affirm on the basis of the path that we have carefully traveled is this: that for a logic as theory of science, a group of laws that called formal laws of substantiation claim a central position of such a kind that, if anything whatsoever deserves to be called logical in the original, specific sense, these laws do. However these laws may stand in relationship to psychology, they constitute a store of laws for their own sake, namely, of theoretical laws, i.e., of laws that in themselves do not, to begin with, affirm anything about a should in the sense of a criterion, or about a should in the sense of a rule of practical realization. It is of great importance, and you will understand this clearly later on, to have once arrived at certain knowledge of the fact that the formal laws to which all logical substantiation is subject can be freed of all normative and practical meaning and that this meaning is their original meaning.Precisely the same is the case here as in mathematics. In practical arithmetic, the theoretical proposition, "The value of a product is independent of the order of the factors" is transformed into the rule that is its directly evident consequence, "One may carry out multiplication in arithmetic in whatever order without having to be afraid of making error by so doing". And this is so everywhere. Precisely the same is the case here as in mathematics. In practical arithmetic, the theoretical proposition, "The value of a product is independent of the order of the factors" is transformed into the rule that is its directly evident consequence, "One may carry out multiplication in arithmetic in whatever order without having to be afraid of making error by so doing". And this is so everywhere.