Is logic an instrument of discovery, or only the science by which reasoning is tested?

Richard Whately, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Logic is the science of the operation of reasoning, and the syllogism is the form to which every valid argument may be reduced so that it can be examined.1 It discovers nothing. That was never its office, and the charge convicted it of failing at a task it never undertook.234

Sources

  1. ANALYTICAL OUTLINE. 39 f 4/> 4. But to resume the investigation of the princi¬ ples of Reasoning: the Maxim resulting from Anstotle s, ° ". ° Dictum. the examination of a syllogism in the foregoing form, and of the application of which, every valid argument is in reality an instance, is, " that whatever is predicated (i. e.
    Elements of Logic
  2. This argument also will be as manifestly valid, if (as in the former case) you substitute for the words which have a known meaning, any undetermined Symbols, such as letters of the alphabet.
    Easy Lessons on Reasoning, pp. 28–29
  3. E. G. " A good government is that which has the happiness of the governed for its object; " if this be a right definition, it will follow that " a gov¬ ernment which has the happiness of the governed for its ob¬ ject is a good one." But to assert a proposition, and to 8 86 ELEMENTS OF LOGIC. [Book II, add, or imply, that it is a just definition, is to make, not one assertion, but two. Chap. III. — Of Arguments.
    Elements of Logic
  4. INTRODUCTION. 13 3.] of all abstract truths obscure and confused, in so far as the rude symbol of each idea is taken in the stead of the idea itself; " with other such expressions, emanating from that which is in truth the ancient and still prevalent doctrine of " Realism." The Syllogistic theory has usually been con- incorrect sidered by these objectors as professing to fur- views of the nish a peculiai method of…
    Elements of Logic

Where the argument is made

  • Elements of Logic (1826), the Introduction and Book IV
  • Easy Lessons on Reasoning (1843)

How the argument was received

The argument that restored the subject to the curriculum, and it concedes to the critics everything except the point.