24 Sept 1814

Logic

Ch.2. Characteristics

'.3. the Field

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The word field having to the purposes of logic been found of special and superior use, while other terms there are which have also been employed to these same purposes, a few words to shew the title it claims it makes to preference may be found perhaps not altogether ill-bestowed.

Sphere, Circle - subjectmatter - subject - in these four will be found comprehended it is believed - the compleat list of those its rivals.

1. As to the word sphere, on many occasions it may no doubt be employed without much difference in the article of convenience.

It labours however under considerable disadvantages.

1. Being borrowed from astronomy, it is apt to present to view as often as employed the idea of that abstruse and irrelevant science, and thereby it diffuses to every subject in which it is employed a considerable shade of abstruseness. The obscurity which unavoidably and perpetually overhangs the nomenclature of logic is sufficiently thick without adding any additional shade to thicken it.

2. A field is susceptible of corners, and in a word of every variety of shape: and to the number of describable sources of division according to which it is capable of being parcelled out there is no certain limit. A sphere has no corners: and to the number of sources of division according to which it is capable of being subjected to division there are determinate limits.

3. The fields of the several arts and sciences, parcel of the general field of art and science, and of the still more complex universal field of human occupation, are with reference to one another contiguous and mutually coincident, and may upon some if not upon all occasions be considered as situated on the same level. But amongst the objects presented to view by the word sphere there can not be any such mutual coincidence or contiguity: and when spoken of several of them on the same occasion some are spoken of as higher, others as lower or inferior.

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