logician

/loʊˈʤɪʃən/

Other forms: logicians

Logic is the science of reasoning and relationships between ideas. An expert in logic is a logician. Spock, a Star Trek character, is the ultimate logician — when asked why not, he answers, "Because it isn't logical."

A logician examines statements to decide whether they are true and is active in the fields of math and computer science. A very simple example of what a logician does can be given with the word or. What exactly does it mean if you say "A or B?" A logician would say that it can mean: 1. A but not B, 2. B but not A, or 3. A and B (this sounds weird but in logic this is true). Or, however, does not mean "not A and not B." Logicians usually deal with much more complex ideas and statements than this.

Definitions of logician

1. noun

   a person skilled at symbolic logic
   synonyms: logistician

   examples:

   William Stanley Jevons

   English economist and logician who contributed to the development of the theory of marginal utility (1835-1882)

   Charles Sanders Peirce

   United States philosopher and logician; pioneer of pragmatism (1839-1914)

   Willard Van Orman Quine

   United States philosopher and logician who championed an empirical view of knowledge that depended on language (1908-2001)

   Bertrand Arthur William Russell

   English philosopher and mathematician who collaborated with Whitehead (1872-1970)

   John Venn

   English logician who introduced Venn diagrams (1834-1923)

   types:

   dialectician

   a logician skilled in dialectic

   syllogiser, syllogist, syllogizer

   logician skilled in syllogistic reasoning

   symbolic logician

   a person skilled at symbolic logic

   type of:

   expert, pundit

   a person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully