Handbook of the History of Logic—Logic And the Modalities in the Twentieth Century

With the publication of the present volume, the Handbook of the History of Logic turns its attention to the remarkable renaissance of modal logic in the 20th century. Beginning with the early systems of C.I. Lewis in 1912, modal logic was a fixture in the century's research programme in logic, but for many years it ran on a parallel track to the rich developments in the more dominant classical logic. One of the great achievements of classical logic was the comparatively early production of a deep semantics for it. Modal logic would have to wait until the seminal work of Hintikka, Kanger and Kripke in the late 1950s and early 1960s. With modal semantics now in hand, it is not too much to say that modal logic leapt its tracks and challenged classical logic head-on for dominance. Part of what makes this an interesting challenge is the sheer proliferation of well-studied systems that burst out of the modal research programme. Further expansion came by way of adaptation of model operators to epistemic and deontic interpretations, and an ensuing exuberance of further systems. Another important development was relevant logic, and with it a change to a more general conception of modal logic, in which the modalities of a system are now represented by a broader range of qualifications on its sentences. Under press of developments in computer science and argumentation theory (chiefly dialogue logic), recognition started to be given to sentence-qualifications other than necessity, obligatoriness and relevance. These include agents, times,tense, change, situations, roles, and with them the modalization of logic came to encompass, temporal and tense logic, dynamic logic, situation logic, dialogue logic, game theoretic logic, and much more.

Logic and the Modalities in the Twentieth Century is an indispensable research tool for anyone interested in the development of logic, including researchers, graduate and senior undergraduate students in logic, history of logic, mathematics, history of mathematics, computer science and AI, linguistics, cognitive science, argumentation theory, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

This volume is number seven in the eleven volume Handbook of the History of Logic. It concentrates on the development of modal logic in the 20th century, one of the most important undertakings in logic's long history. Written by the leading researchers and scholars in the field, the volume explores the logics of necessity and possibility, knowledge and belief, obligation and permission, time, tense and change, relevance, and more. Both this volume and the Handbook as a whole are definitive reference tools for senior undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in the history of logic, the history of philosophy, and any discipline, such as mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, for whom the historical background of his or her work is a salient consideration.


· Unique. There is no other such work in English.
· Authoritative. Authors of chapters are leading scholars.
· Rich. Authors have not been constrained by scanty page limitations.
· Detailed. Some chapters are the size of small monographs.
· Comprehensive. The entire range of modal logic is covered.
· Important. A singular contribution to the intellectual history of the 20th century.
· Original. Contains the latest scholarly discoveries and interpretative insights
· Exciting. Authors attack open questions with gusto.