Condensed detachment is usually regarded as a notation, and defined by example. In this paper it is regarded as a rule of inference, and rigorously defined with the help of the Unification Theorem of J. A. Robinson. Historically, however, the invention of condensed detachment by C. A. Meredith preceded Robinson's studies of unification. It is argued that Meredith's ideas deserve recognition in the history of unification, and the possibility that Meredith was influenced, through ukasiewicz, by ideas of Tarski going back (...) at least to 1939, and possibly to 1930 or earlier, is discussed. It is proved that a term is derivable by substitution and ordinary detachment from given axioms if and only if it is a substitution instance of a term which is derivable from these axioms by condensed detachment, and it is shown how this theorem enables the ideas of ukasiewicz and Tarski mentioned above to be formalized and extended. Finally, it is shown how condensed detachment may be subsumed within the resolution principle of J. A. Robinson, and several computer studies of particular Hilbert-type propositional calculi using programs based on condensed detachment or on resolution are briefly discussed. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis intended his systems S1–S5 as contributions to the study of “strict implication”, but in his formulation, strict implication is so thoroughly intertwined with other notions, such as possibility and negation, that it remains a problem, to separate out the properties of strict implication itself. I shall solve this problem for S2–5 and von Wright's M. The results for S3–5 are given below, while the implicative parts of S2 and M, which are rather more complicated, are given in (...) §5.In this presentation, ‘⊃’ stands for strict implication, and missing brackets for ‘⊃’ are restored by associationtothe right. Astrictformula is one of the form A ⊃ B. Axiom schemes are used throughout. (shrink)