Future Research on Ancient Theories of Communication and Reasoning

Abstract

In Die Meistersinger one finds some advice which to some extent expresses the general attitude of this symposium. It reads as follows: “If you by rules would measure what doth not with your rules agree, forgetting all your learning, seek ye first what its rules may be”. It is interesting to reflect on some possible explanations of why it is now possible for us to ‘forget all our learning’ and seek ‘the rules that the ancients had purposed’. Perhaps the most relevant fact is that we now possess a framework rich enough to encompass and categorize many diverse theories of language and reasoning. In the second place, as a result of what must have appeared as 75 years of game-playing, we now have, in reasonably developed form, literally hundreds of possible abstract languages and logics. Consequently, we can now afford to look with an unjaundiced and objective eye at the writings of the ancients. The danger of forcing an ancient theory into a procrustean bed is considerably diminished.