Tension of Exceeding and Reconstructing the Aristotelian Logic: An Overview of 17th and 18th Century Ottoman-Turkish History of Logic

Abstract

Until recently, the studies on the Ottoman intellectual history showed a tendency to describe the seventeenth century and later periods as the age of collapse and decline while describing the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as productive periods. It can be easily understood that this narrative is influenced by political historiography rather than intellectual historiography. Nowadays, this attitude has changed and the way of producing and processing knowledge of Ottoman scholars in these centuries has begun to be handled more rationally. This article not only examines the views of Ottoman-Turkish logicians on various subjects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but also provides a general evaluation of the history of logic in these ages. It is observed that the mainstream logic studies exceeded the borders of Avicennian-Aristotelianism and developed a renewal attitude in itself. On the other hand, it is understood that some works have also brought a proposal to back to Aristotle as the idea of renewal, even if it could not establish a settled tradition. This article aims to present an imprecise proposal that the period can be read through these two qualities.