The prominence in current discussion of the logical reforms proposed by the "analytic logic" of the neo-realistic movement and the enthusiastic optimism of its representatives over the prospective results of these reforms for logic, science, and practical life are the warrant for devoting a special section to their discussion.
There are indeed some marked differences of opinion among the expounders of the "new logic" concerning the results which it is expected to achieve. Some find that it clears away incredible accumulations of metaphysical lumber; others rejoice that it is to restore metaphysics, "once the queen of the sciences, to her ancient throne."
But whatever the difference among the representatives of analytical logic all seem agreed at the outset on two fundamental reforms which the "new logic" makes. These are: first, that analytic logic gets rid entirely of the _act_ of knowing, the retention of which has been the bane of all other logics; second, in its discovery of "terms and relations," "sense-data and universals" as the simple elements not only of logic but of the world, it furnishes science at last with the simple neutral elements at large which it is supposed science so long has sought, and "mourned because it found them not."
Taking these in order, we are told that "realism frees logic as a study of objective fact from all accounts of the states and operations of mind." ... "Logic and mathematics are sciences which can be pursued quite independently of the study of knowing."[20] "The new logic believes that it deals with no such entities as thoughts, ideas, or minds, but with entities that merely are."[20]
The motive for the banishment of the act of knowing from logic is that as an _act_ knowing is "mental," "psychological," and "subjective."[21] All other logics have indeed realized this subjective character of the _act_ of knowing, but have neither dared completely to discard it nor been able sufficiently to counteract its effects even with such agencies as the objective universal to prevent it from infecting logic with its subjectivity. Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compromise with this subjective act of knowing, say these reformers, it has been forced constantly into epistemology and has become a hybrid science. Had logic possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this subjective Jonah it would have been spared the storms of epistemology and the reefs of metaphysics.