Note 405 — Chapter VII

This form of sorites ought not properly to be called Aristotelian; but it is generally so described in logical text-books. The name sorites is not to be found in any logical treatise of Aristotle, though in one place he refers vaguely to the form of reasoning which the name is now employed to express. The distinct exposition of this form of reasoning is attributed to the Stoics, and it is designated sorites by Cicero; but it was not till much later that the name came into general use amongst logicians in this sense. The form of sorites called the Goclenian was first given by Professor Rudolf Goclenius of Marburg (1547 to 1628) in his Isagoge in Organum Aristotelis, 1598. Compare Hamilton, Logic, I. p. 375; and Ueberweg, Logic, § 125. It may be added that the term sorites (which is derived from σωρὸς, a heap) was used by ancient writers in a different sense, namely, to designate a particular sophism, based on the difficulty which is sometimes found in assigning an exact limit to a notion. “It was asked,—was a man bald who had so many thousand hairs; you answer, No: the antagonist goes on diminishing and diminishing the number, till either you admit that he who was not bald with a certain number of hairs, becomes bald when that complement is diminished by a single hair; or you go on denying him to be bald, until his head be hypothetically denuded.” A similar puzzle is involved in the question,—On what day does a lamb become a sheep? Sorites in this sense is also called sophisma polyzeteseos or fallacy of continuous questioning. See Hamilton, Logic, i. p. 464.