It is a piece of idle senthentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, or prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application oflegal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in th...

History in fast-forward. Logic and argumentation are a natural combination. Though the precise origins of logic are hidden in the mists of antiquity, reflection on patterns in legal or philosophical debate may have been one of the driving forces in the genesis of the discipline. But afterwards, the main emphasis over time shifted to consequence relations in an abstract universe of propositions,...