Semantics, Logic, and Epistemology

As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance in the late fifteenth century, logic (on which semantics had been centered) first lost its medieval attainments and then subsided into inactivity until the middle of the nineteenth century. What little there was in the way of logical inquiry from about 1450 to about 1850 was carried on under the view of logic as the art (or science) of reason, the idea of scientia sermocinalis having been ridiculed into oblivion by the Renaissance humanists. Aside from the work of late Scholastics, such as the Ars Logica of John of St. Thomas (1589–1644), and an occasional deliberate attempt at revival, such as the Logica Fundamentis Suis a Quibus Hactenus Collapsa Fuerat Restituta (1662) of Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669), there were no further developments of the logicosemantic theories of the logica moderna.

Philosophers retained their interest in...