Logic occupies a prominent position in the canon of all scientific disciplines: Logic can represent the fundamental relationships between prevailing knowledge content, without introducing its own content. This content neutrality coupled with the ability to represent knowledge content and to generate indisputable contextual relationships makes logic an ideal basic discipline and a paradigm for scholarly science in general.
Even philosophy, if questions of foundation and justification become the focus of interest as with Fichte and in Hegel's system, seeked to secure its basis as a science by falling back on the fundamentals of logic. Aristotelian logic proved inappropriate for this purpose - a new understanding of logic was needed to establish logic as a basic science.
Since the time of Leibniz, the dominant idea of the logical processes was calculus - a "pure arithmetic" of form - which inherently guarantees the claim that no connections to additional content, no matter how hidden, will be included in the calculation. This presupposes two things: The content neutrality is as assured as in pure arithmetic and need no longer be proved by means of philosophic reflection. On the other hand, this basic idea opened the door for the inclusion of mathematics in inherently logical matters.
It lasted till the second half of the 19th century to overcome Aristotle's logic in a sustainable way. Under the influence of Georg Cantor's work on set theory and essentially due to the work of Gottlob Frege a new concept of logic as symbolic calculus finally evolved. Since then logic has been not only a subdivision of both Mathematics and Philosophy but also a foundational discipline and scientific paradigm for scientific development in general.
The aim of the “Bibliography of Logic” project is to document this important area of scientific theory in all of its breadth and depth; to organize it and provide access to the results. This establishes a unifying and sustainable classification tool for this fundamental discipline in the canon of other scientific disciplines. Because of the unique position of logic, this approach extends well beyond its own subject area and constitutes a service that represents a general cultural value.
Located in the Philosophy Department chaired by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Neuser the Logic Documentation Center is the successor to the "Mathematical Logic" project undertaken at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.