The Art of Thinking

Résumé En

Logic in the modern phrase is the Art of Thinking, a help or instrument of reason." Thus wrote the Cambridge antiquarian Thomas Baker in his Reflections upon Learning (1699), an "Historical Account" of philosophy, conceived as an overview of the successes and failures of various ancients and moderns in each branch of learning. 1 The phrase 'art of thinking' had been made popular by the title of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole's La Logique, ou l'art de penser (1662), also known as the Port Royal Logic. 2 In the hands of Baker and other authors reflecting on what it meant to be modern in the late seventeenth century, the phrase was used as a general name for logic or method that would apply equally well to the theories of Ramus, Bacon, Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, and even to that of Aristotle. In this chapter we propose an approach to the history of early modern logic and method 3 that places our topic within the specific context of the late seventeenth-century debate over the relative worth of ancient and modern learning. This debate initiated a period of "intense selfreflection" in which both the literary and the scientific merits of the present were compared with those of the pasta process which subsequently helped fashion "the narrative of Enlightenment." 4 We will show that logic, rebranded as 'the art of thinking,' was one of the core concerns of authors on both sides of the debate. We will be interested in the way their reflections, whether in support of Aristotelian or of the various brands of 'modern' logics, contributed to the construction of an image of philosophical modernity at the high point of the Scientific Revolution. This image was inherently polemical and pluralistic, as will emerge from the variety of canons and the diversity of positions on the ingredients of the art of thinking that we will identify in their writings. Yet it will also appear that the points of disagreement reveal an underlying consensus about the core features that the 1 Baker 1699: 51, A7 r. 2 A previous occurrence is in Gassendi 1658 (ars bene cogitandi). The Cartesians usually adopted the phrase. Gassendi also referred to logic as ars disserendi, which had a double pedigree: