Logic

Logic (from the Ancient Greek: λογική, logike) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the use and study of valid reasoning. The study of logic also features prominently in mathematics and computer science.

Logic was studied in several ancient civilizations, including Greece, India, and China. In the West, logic was established as a formal discipline by Aristotle, who gave it a fundamental place in philosophy. The study of logic was part of the classical trivium, which also included grammar and rhetoric. Logic was further extended by Al-Farabi who categorized it into two separate groups (idea and proof). Later, Avicenna revived the study of logic and developed relationship between temporalis and the implication. In the East, logic was developed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains.

Logic is often divided into three parts: inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning.

The study of logic

The concept of logical form is central to logic. The validity of an argument is determined by its logical form, not by its content. Traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic logic are examples of formal logic.

Logic programming

Logic programming is a programming paradigm based on formal logic. A program written in a logic programming language is a set of sentences in logical form, expressing facts and rules about some problem domain. Major logic programming language families include Prolog, Answer set programming (ASP) and Datalog. In all of these languages, rules are written in the form of clauses:

and are read declaratively as logical implications:

H is called the head of the rule and B₁, …, B_n is called the body. Facts are rules that have no body, and are written in the simplified form:

In the simplest case in which H, B₁, …, B_n are all atomic formulae, these clauses are called definite clauses or Horn clauses. However, there exist many extensions of this simple case, the most important one being the case in which conditions in the body of a clause can also be negations of atomic formulae. Logic programming languages that include this extension have the knowledge representation capabilities of a non-monotonic logic.