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-satisable, one applies the law of excluded middle to undecidable alterna-
tives, and the argument is not considered to be nitary, in Hilberts sense of
the word. Herbrand, who adopted Hilberts nitism, regarded such an argu-
ment as unacceptable and did not draw the inference, although he was aware
of its possibility. In 1930 Kurt G odel (19061978) published a proof of the
completeness of rst-order logic that follows the lines indicated above.
The Herbrand approach to logic, which consists in considering the suc-
cessive Herbrand disjunctions of a formula, has two aspects, syntactic and
semantic. If, as we did above, we obtain the disjunction by substituting syn-
tactic objects, namely the variables of Q that are in , the Herbrand method
can be considered to be a proof procedure. We have seen above that the set
of formulas of Q that have a valid Herbrand disjunction is recursively enu-
merable; hence, given a formula F, searching for a number k such that D
k
is valid is exactly of the same complexity as searching for a proof if F in
any given standard system of quantication theory. And the soundness-and-
completeness result for that proof procedure would be that a formula is valid
J. van Heijenoort Log. Univers.
if and only if some Herbrand disjunction of the formula is valid. We can,
however, adopt another point of view. We can now consider the elements of
to be, not variables of Q, but names of objects in a certain domain. The
Herbrand disjunctions are no longer formulas of Q; they are expressions in
a new language (compare validity in a nite domain: nitely many names
are introduced, universal quantiers are turned into conjunctions, existential
quantiers into disjunctions, then truth tales are used; we can look at the
whole operation either as syntactic or as semantic). The validity, for some k,
of the kth Herbrand disjunction is regarded as a constructive substitute for
set-theoretic valicity, and the Herbrand theorem becomes a nitistic analogue
of the soundness-and-completeness theorem of quantication theory: a formula
is, in that case, constructively valid if and only if it is provable.
In 1934 Gerhard Gentzen (19091943)
7
introduced several systems, ade-
quate either for the classical or for the intuitionistic rst-order predicate calcu-
lus, that presented novel features, dierent from those of the systems currently
used (Frege, Russell-Hilbert-Ackermann, Heyting). One feature of Gentzens
systems is that they deal with sequents, that is, arrays consisting of two nite
sequences of formulas separated by :
A
1
, A
2
, . . ., A
m
B
1
, B
2
, . . ., B
n
.
This sequent can be read as
A
1
& A
2
, & & A
m
entails B
1
B
2
B
n
.
Another feature of these systems is that they employ relatively many rules and
just one axiom (or, rather, axiom schema), namely A A. But the decisive
trait is that the function of the rules, except for the cut rule, which is the
analogue of the rule of detachment, and the relatively innocuous structural
rules, is to allow the introduction of a connective or a quantier in either
the rst or the second sequence of a sequent. Gentzen showed that the cut
rule is eliminable. We thus obtain cut-free proofs that proceed by a gradual
construction of the formula to be proved. These proofs have the subformula
property, just like proofs in Herbrands Q
H
.
For classical rst-order logic Gentzen also showed that any proof can be
divided into two parts: rst, sentential rules establish, from axioms, a senten-
tially valid Mittelsequenz, then the successive introduction of quantiers leads
to the formula to be proved. Thus Gentzens Mittelsequenz corresponds to
Herbrands valid disjunction D
k
. Hence Gentzens results, at least for classical
logic, bear a strong relation to Herbrands.
7
Editors note: Most sources now give the date of Gentzens death as 4 August 1945; see,
e.g., p. viii of the Bibliographic sketch by Szabo in Manfred E. Szabo (editor), The Collected
Papers of Gerhard Gentzen (Amsterdam/London: North-Holland, 1969; reprinted 1970),
viiviii. See details in Premysl Vihan, The Last Months of Gerhard Gentzen in Prague,
Collegium Logicum: Annals of the Kurt Godel Society 1 (1995), 17, and in Chapter 6 of
Eckart Menzler-Trott (Craig Smory nski & Edward Grior, translators), Logics Lost Genius:
The Life of Gerhard Gentzen (Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2007).
Historical Development of Modern Logic
Gentzen himself considered his method to be syntactic. He had rules
dierent from those of Frege and Russell, but of essentially the same nature.
Gentzens rules, however, can be viewed from a semantic point of view. If a
rule allows us to infer, from the derivability of A, the derivability of B, the
same rule, read backward, allows us to infer, from the existence of a falsifying
interpretation of B, the existence of a falsifying interpretation of A. Thus
Gentzens syntactic rules have a close relationship to the semantic rules that
would obtain by asking the question: if a formula F is f under a certain
interpretation, what are the truth values of the subformulas of F? For example,
if F is G & H, then G is f or H is f; if F is G H, then G is f and H is
f; if F is (x)Gx, then, for some individual constant a, Ga is f; and so on.
This method was codied by Evert Willem Beth (19081964): one writes in
the left column of a semantic tableau the subformulas of F that are t in any
interpretation in which F is f and in the right column of the tableau the
subformulas of F that are f in any interpretation in which F is f (hence
one starts with F in the right column, the left column being empty). If the
tableau is closed, that is, if the same formula occurs in the left and in the
right columns, any interpretation in which F is f has to satisfy the impossible
requirement that it makes one and the same formula both t and f; hence there
is no such interpretation, which means that F is valid. The complete picture
is somewhat more complicated than what this brief description can convey:
when there is a disjunction in the left column or a conjunction in the right
column, a tableau splits into two subtableaux; if a tableau is not closed, it
may proceed indenitely; and so on. The basic idea, however, is quite simple
and leads to a remarkably elegant procedure. This procedure can be further
simplied if we remark that the left and right columns of a semantic tableau
form two isomorphic trees: if a formula is in one column, its negation can be
written in the other; hence one column can be suppressed, and we are led to
the tree method (codied in a textbook by Richard Jerey (19242002) [12]),
8
which is a very convenient proof procedure for quantication theory.
8
Editors note: Raymond M. Smullyans graduate-level textbook, First-order Logic
(Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer-Verlag, 1968; New York: Dover Publications, 1995),
based upon work conducted beginning around 1959 and published mainly between 1963 and
1968, which presented his analytic tableau or trees, appeared a year after Jereys text-
book. The evolution of the tree method from Beth tableaux and Hintikka model sets in the
work of Smullyan is detailed in Irving H. Anellis, From Semantic Tableaux to Smullyan
Trees: A History of the Development of the Falsiability Tree Method, Modern Logic 1
(1990), 3669; 263. William Warren Bartley (19341990) in his Editors Introduction, to
Lewis Carrolls Symbolic Logic (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., Publishers, 1977), 3
36, argued that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (18321898) in 1894 obtained trees equivalent
to Beths semantic tableau; in Lewis Carrolls Method of Trees: Its Origins in Studies in
Logic, Modern Logic 1 (1990), 2534, Francine Abeles has shown that, inspired by the work
1883 of Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914) and his students, especially Ladd-Frankins On
the Algebra of Logic, in C. S. Peirce (ed.), Studies in Logic (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.,
1883), 1771, and the Note on an Eight-term Logic Machine, in C. S. Peirce (ed.), Studies
in Logic (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1883), 16, of Allan Marquand (18531924), Dodgson
presented trees as a proof procedure for chains of syllogisms. Zbigniew Lis had already pub-
lished his version of the method, in Wynikanie semantyczne a wynikanie formalne, Studia
Logica 10 (1960), 3960, but it attracted little attention.
J. van Heijenoort Log. Univers.
The present survey had to conne itself to the mainstream of modern
logic. Several aspects of logic have been left untouched, in particular the logi-
cal systems that dier from classical logic: the various modal logics, the mul-
tivalued logics, and especially intuitionistic logic. This last logic, born from
considerations about the foundations of mathematics, claims to be an alterna-
tive to classical logic, at least in the domain of mathematical arguments.
Modern times, that is, the period since 1879, have seen a renaissance
of logical studies. Two satellite elds have appeared: set theory and founda-
tions of mathematics, and there have been many reciprocal inuences between
these two elds and logic. The revival of logic is also partly responsible for
the growing analytical tendency in contemporary philosophy. Logical investi-
gations form today a very lively eld.
References
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Historical Development of Modern Logic
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