Richard Arthur's Natural Deduction provides a wide-ranging introduction to logic. In lively and readable prose, Arthur presents a new approach to the study of logic, one that seeks to integrate methods of argument analysis developed in modern "informal logic" with natural deduction techniques. The dry bones of logic are given flesh by unusual attention to the history of the subject, from Pythagoras, the Stoics, and Indian Buddhist logic, through Lewis Carroll, Venn, and Boole, to Russell, Frege, and Monty Python.

Richard T.W. Arthur's profile page

Richard Arthur is Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University.

"This excellent text covers all the standard topics and more. Its real strength lies in the clarity and humour of exposition and in the richness of examples and exercises. The illustrations are invariably interesting, since often they are related to current events or the history of philosophy and science or are drawn from Monty Python. The last of these provides several memorable fallacies. Arthur's Natural Deduction is one of the finest introductions to logic available today."

James Robert Brown

"Richard Arthur's engagingly written Natural Deduction introduces symbolic logic as something that grows naturally out of everyday reasoning. The treatment of category logic in this book, based on an elegant notation created by Lewis Carroll, is original and insightful. I also like Arthur's suggestion that there is a link between logic and humour: the same mental muscles that enable one to see the point of a joke must also be those that enable one to see a logical connection. His exercises are ingenious and thought-provoking. This unique book is superb and I recommend it highly."

Kent A. Peacock