Analysis has always been at the heart of philosophical method, but ithas been understood and practised in many different ways. Perhaps, inits broadest sense, it might be defined as a process of identifying orworking back to what is more fundamental by means of which something,initially taken as given, can be derived, explained or reconstructed.The derivation, explanation or reconstruction is sometimes conceivedas the corresponding process of synthesis, but it is more oftencounted as part of the analytic project as a whole. This allows greatvariation in specific method, however. The aim may be to get back tobasics and elucidate connections, but there may be all sorts of waysof doing this, each of which might be called ‘analysis’.The dominance of ‘analytic’ philosophy in theEnglish-speaking world, and its growing influence in the rest of theworld, might suggest that a consensus has formed concerning the roleand importance of analysis. But this assumes that there is agreementon what ‘analysis’ means, and this is far from clear.Throughout the history of philosophy there have also been powerfulcriticisms of analysis, but these have always been to specific formsof analysis, which has only encouraged the development of newer forms.If we look at the history of philosophy, and even at just the historyof (recent Western) analytic philosophy, we find a rich and extensiverepertoire of conceptions and techniques of analysis whichphilosophers have continually drawn upon and modified in differentways. Analytic philosophy is thriving precisely because of the rangeof conceptions and techniques of analysis that it involves. It mayhave fragmented into various interlocking subtraditions and,increasingly, is now being ‘backdated’ and widened inscope to include earlier and contemporaneous traditions, but thosesubtraditions and related traditions are held together by their sharedhistory and methodological interconnections. There are also forms ofanalysis in traditions clearly distinct from Western analyticphilosophy, and these also need to be recognized and brought intodebates about analytic methodologies, to open up new approaches andperspectives. It is the aim of this article to indicate something ofthe range of conceptions of analysis in the history of philosophy andtheir interconnections, as well as their role in understanding thehistory of philosophy itself, and to provide a bibliographicalresource for those wishing to explore analytic methodologies and thephilosophical issues they raise.

• 1. General Introduction
  • 1.1 Characterizations of Analysis
  • 1.2 Terms for Analysis
  • 1.3 Guide to this Entry
• 2. Ancient Conceptions of Analysis
• 3. Medieval and Renaissance Conceptions of Analysis
• 4. Early Modern Conceptions of Analysis
• 5. Modern Conceptions of Analysis, outside Analytic Philosophy
• 6. Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy
• 7. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. General Introduction

The word ‘analysis’ derives from the ancient Greek term‘analusis’. The prefix ‘ana’means ‘up’ and ‘lusis’ (from the verb‘luein’) means ‘loosening’,‘separating’, or ‘release’, so that‘analusis’ means ‘loosening up’,‘breaking up’, or ‘dissolution’. One of itsearliest recorded uses occurs in Homer’sOdyssey, wherePenelope is described as ‘analysing’—i.e.,‘unravelling’—by night the shroud she was weaving byday, to stave off her suitors, having promised to decide who to marry(in Odysseus’ long absence) when the shroud was finished. Theterm was then extended, metaphorically, in talking of‘unravelling’ or ‘dissolving’ problems (Beaney2017, pp. 94–5, where the brilliance of Penelope’ssolution to her own problem is noted!). Philosophical andmethodological terms often have their roots in metaphorical uses ofeveryday terms, and this talk of ‘unravelling’ and relatedtalk of weaving and unweaving a web may perhaps be the most importantof all. They are metaphors that are widely used in many cultures,making a cross-cultural investigation especially appropriate andfruitful.

We can use the metaphor in introducing the account offered here. Overthe course of the history of philosophy, a complex web of conceptionsand practices of analysis has been woven, and our aim is to unravelselected parts of this to give some sense of its nature and structure.The idea of ‘unravelling’ itself provides an initialthread to find our way through this web, but this thread is interwovenwith many other threads, and the term ‘analysis’, too, isonly one of a web of terms used in conceptualizing and practisinganalysis. (In this substantially revised and expanded version of theentry on ‘Analysis’, we will be considering examples fromvarious ‘non-Western’ traditions, to give a more roundedpicture of the world-wide web of analysis, but here we will have to beeven more selective to maintain perspicuity.)

1.1 Characterizations of Analysis

If asked what ‘analysis’ means, most people todayimmediately think of breaking something down into its components; andthis is how analysis tends to be officially characterized. In theConcise Oxford Dictionary, for example,‘analysis’ is defined as the “resolution intosimpler elements by analysing (opp.synthesis)”, theonly other uses mentioned being the mathematical and the psychological [Quotation]. And in theOxford Dictionary of Philosophy,‘analysis’ is defined as “the process of breaking aconcept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure isdisplayed” [Quotation]. The restriction to concepts and the reference to displaying‘logical structure’ are important qualifications, but thecore conception remains that of breaking something down.

This conception may be called thedecompositional conceptionof analysis. This is clearly connected to the idea of unravelling. Wemay need to take something apart to understand how it is composed orworks, and we can see how an analytic project may have adecompositional–compositional structure. We need to identify thekey elements that enable us to explain how something is put togetheror works.

This is not the only conception, however, and is arguably neither thedominant conception in the pre-modern period nor the conception thatis characteristic of at least one major strand in‘analytic’ philosophy. In ancient Greek thought,‘analysis’ referred primarily to the process of workingback to first principles by means of which something could then bedemonstrated. This conception may be called theregressiveconception of analysis (seeSection 2). Since the aim is to see how something is then derived or explained,the complementary process—‘synthesis’ or‘progression’, as we might call it—is also involvedin the analytic project as a whole. Indeed, following through theimplications of something may be one way to identify the more basicpropositions or principles (see the supplementary section onAncient Greek Geometry). So analysis here may have a regressive–progressivestructure.

In the work of Frege and Russell, on the other hand, before theprocesses of decomposition and/or regression could take place, thestatements to be analysed had first to be translated into their‘correct’ logical form (seeSection 6). This suggests that analysis also involves aninterpretive ortransformative dimension. This too, however, has its roots inearlier thought (see especially the supplementary sections onAncient Greek Geometry andMedieval European Philosophy), and is exemplified in an even more striking form in Indian analyticphilosophy (see the supplementary sections onMedieval Indian Philosophy andIndian Analytic Philosophy). Once again, there is a bidirectional process involved, translatinginto and out of the privileged conceptual or logical framework, sothat analysis may also have an interpretive–reinterpretivestructure.

These three conceptions should not be seen as competing. In actualpractices of analysis, which are invariably richer than the accountsthat are offered of them, all three conceptions are typicallyreflected, though to differing degrees and in differing forms. Toanalyse something, we may first have to interpret it in some way,translating an initial statement, say, into the privileged language oflogic, linguistic theory, mathematics, or science, before articulatingthe relevant elements and structures, and all in the service ofidentifying fundamental principles by means of which to explain it.The complexities that this schematic description suggests can only beappreciated by considering particular examples of analysis.

There is a fourth conception, however, which fits comfortably into aholistic worldview rather than the atomistic worldview associated withthe decompositional conception. This involves a movement not from whatis initially given to its parts, but from what is initially given tothe wider whole. This can be called theconnectiveconception. The idea here is that something can only be properlyunderstood in its connective relations to appropriate things in thewider context or whole. It might be regarded as anelucidatory rather thanexplanatory conception, andin the period of ordinary language philosophy in twentieth-centuryanalytic philosophy, in reacting to the earlier phase of logicalatomism, was contrasted with the reductive or decompositionalconception (see the supplementary section onOxford Linguistic Philosophy). Connective analysis may also be seen as capturing thecomplementarity involved in the other conceptions. For inseeing something as connected to other things in a larger whole, onemay also be seeing that whole as decomposable into parts, or a systemof thought as generated from certain axioms, or a set of claims asinterpretable within a more technical language. So connective analysisitself connects the decompositional–compositional,regressive–progressive and interpretive–reinterpretivestructures that analytic projects as a whole typically have.

These four conceptions, then, should be seen asaspects ofanalytic projects that are themselves to be understood as wholes.Analysis can itself be analysed, and in what follows, we do so bygoing back into the history of philosophy, identifying particularexamples and accepted models to illustrate the range of forms ofanalysis, and interpreting and connecting them to provide as rich anaccount as we can (in the space of this entry) of analytic methodologyin philosophy.

Philosophical analysis, of course, is only onetype ofanalysis, and there are indefinitely many other types, such asgeometrical analysis, linguistic analysis, logical analysis,mathematical analysis, hermeneutic analysis, psychological analysis,psychoanalysis, phenomenological analysis, political analysis,economic analysis, feminist analysis, and so on. This is hardlysurprising, for in every science or field of thinking, analytictechniques are employed, and the analysis can be qualified in therespective way. Philosophical analysis has its own forms, but theyinterconnect with—and are inspired by—related types ofanalysis such as geometrical analysis, logical analysis, linguisticanalysis, conceptual analysis, psychological analysis, mathematicalanalysis, and so on. The intricate web of analysis does indeed reachthrough the whole world of conceptual thought.

1.2 Terms for Analysis

Understanding conceptions of analysis is not simply a matter ofattending to the use of the word ‘analysis’ and itscognates—or obvious equivalents in languages other than English,such as ‘analusis’ in Greek or‘Analyse’ in German. Socratic definition isarguably a form of conceptual analysis, yet the term‘analusis’ does not occur anywhere inPlato’s dialogues (seeSection 2 below). Nor, indeed, do we find it in Euclid’sElements, which is the classic text for understanding ancientGreek geometry: Euclid presupposed what came to be known as the methodof analysis in presenting his proofs ‘synthetically’. InLatin, ‘resolutio’ was used to render the Greekword ‘analusis’ in its methodological use (with‘decompositio’ also used in other contexts), andalthough ‘resolution’ has a different range of meanings,it is often used synonymously with ‘analysis’ (see thesupplementary section onEuropean Renaissance Philosophy). In Aristotelian syllogistic theory, and especially from the time ofDescartes, forms of analysis have also involved‘reduction’; and in early analytic philosophy it was‘reduction’ that was seen as the goal of philosophicalanalysis (see especially the supplementary section onThe Cambridge School of Analysis).

When it comes to considering philosophical traditions outside theWestern canon, we need to be open-minded about the prospects ofmethodologies being ‘analytic’, or at least analogous toanalytic methodologies, even if rather different terms are used orthey are conceived or practised in rather different ways. In an earlytext of ancient Indian philosophy, for example, scholarly debate isdescribed as an ‘unravelling’(‘nibbeṭhanam’), invoking just that basicmetaphor we have seen in the case of ‘analysis’ (see thesupplementary section onAncient Indian Philosophy.) And even if the differences outweigh the similarities, this in itselfmay shed light on what ‘analysis’ means, by way ofcontrast (see, for example, the supplementary section onAncient Chinese Philosophy). One sign of just how extensively analytic methodologies can be foundacross the range of philosophical traditions is the ease with whichlater commentators, especially in the modern period, describe them as‘analytic’. It is not anachronistic, as there are oftenstrong grounds for doing so. Talk of ‘analysis’ hasevolved dramatically across the centuries and the interwoven threadsof continuity are not only natural but enrich our thinking and deepenour sense of a common humanity and rationality.

Further details of characterizations of analysis that have beenoffered in the history of philosophy, including all the classicpassages and remarks (to which occurrences of ‘[Quotation]’ throughout this entry refer), can be found in the supplementarydocument on

Definitions and Descriptions of Analysis.

A list of key reference works, monographs and collections can be foundin the

Annotated Bibliography, §1.

1.3 Guide to this Entry

This entry comprises three sets of documents:

1. The present document
2. Six supplementary documents
3. An annotated bibliography on analysis, divided into sixdocuments

The present document provides an overview, with introductions to thevarious conceptions of analysis in the history of philosophy. It alsocontains links to the supplementary documents, the documents in thebibliography, and other internet resources. The supplementarydocuments expand on certain topics under each of the six mainsections. The annotated bibliography contains a list of key readingson each topic, and is also divided according to the sections of thisentry.

2. Ancient Conceptions of Analysis

As noted above, the word ‘analysis’ derives from theancient Greek term ‘analusis’, which originallymeant ‘loosening up’ or ‘dissolution’ and wasthen readily extended to the solving or dissolving of a problem. Itwas in this sense that it was employed in ancient Greek geometry andthe method of analysis that was developed influenced both Plato andAristotle. Also important, however, was the influence ofSocrates’s concern with definition, in which the roots of modernconceptual analysis can be found. What we already have in ancientGreek thought, then, is a complex web of methodologies, of which themost important are Socratic definition, which Plato elaborated intohis method of division, his related method of hypothesis, which drewon geometrical analysis, and the method(s) that Aristotle developed inhisAnalytics. Far from a consensus having established itselfover the last two millennia, the relationships between thesemethodologies are the subject of increasing debate today. At the heartof all of them, too, lie the philosophical problems raised byMeno’s paradox, which anticipates what we now know as theparadox of analysis, concerning how an analysis can be both correctand informative (see the supplementary section onMoore), and Plato’s attempt to solve it through the theory ofrecollection, which has spawned a vast literature on its own.

‘Analysis’ was first used in a methodological sense inancient Greek geometry, and the model that Euclidean geometry providedhas been an inspiration ever since. Although Euclid’sElements dates from around 300BCE, and henceafter both Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that it draws on the workof many previous geometers, most notably, Theaetetus and Eudoxus, whoworked closely with Plato and Aristotle. Plato is even credited byDiogenes Laertius (LEP, I, 299) with inventing the method ofanalysis, but whatever the truth of this may be, the influence ofgeometry starts to show in his middle dialogues, and he certainlyencouraged work on geometry in his Academy.

The classic source for our understanding of ancient Greek geometricalanalysis is a passage in Pappus’sMathematicalCollection, which was composed around 300CE, andhence drew on a further six centuries of work in geometry from thetime of Euclid’sElements:

Now analysis is the way from what is sought—as if it wereadmitted—through its concomitants (akolouthôn) inorder[,] to something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis wesuppose that which is sought to be already done, and we inquire fromwhat it results, and again what is the antecedent of the latter, untilwe on our backward way light upon something already known and beingfirst in order. And we call such a method analysis, as being asolution backwards (anapalin lysin).

In synthesis, on the other hand, we suppose that which was reachedlast in analysis to be already done, and arranging in their naturalorder as consequents (epomena) the former antecedents andlinking them one with another, we in the end arrive at theconstruction of the thing sought. And this we call synthesis. [Full Quotation]

Analysis is clearly being understood here in the regressivesense—as involving the working back from ‘what issought’, taken as assumed, to something more fundamental bymeans of which it can then be established, through its converse,synthesis (progression). For example, to demonstratePythagoras’s theorem—that the square of the hypotenuse ofa right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on theother two sides—we may assume as ‘given’ aright-angled triangle with the three squares drawn on its sides. Ininvestigating the properties of this complex figure we may drawfurther (auxiliary) lines between particular points and find thatthere are a number of congruent triangles, from which we can begin towork out the relationship between the relevant areas.Pythagoras’s theorem thus depends on theorems about congruenttriangles, and once these—and other—theorems have beenidentified (and themselves proved), Pythagoras’s theorem can beproved. (The theorem is demonstrated in Proposition 47 of Book I ofEuclid’sElements.)

The basic idea here provides the core of the conception of analysisthat one can find reflected, in its different ways, in the work ofPlato and Aristotle (see the supplementary sections onPlato andAristotle). Although detailed examination of actual practices of analysis revealsmore than just regression to first causes, principles or theorems, butdecomposition,transformation andconnection as well (see especially the supplementary sectiononAncient Greek Geometry), the regressive conception dominated views of analysis in Europe untilwell into the early modern period.

Ancient Greek geometry was not the only source of later conceptions ofanalysis, however. Plato may not have used the term‘analysis’, but concern with definition was central to hisdialogues, and definitions have often been seen as what‘conceptual analysis’ should yield. The definition of‘knowledge’ as ‘true belief with an account’,to put it in Platonic terms, is one example. (The stock example is thedefinition of ‘knowledge’ as ‘justified truebelief’, but it is controversial that this is Plato’s owndefinition and even whether it was offered at all before the middle ofthe twentieth century.) Plato’s concern may have been with realrather than nominal definitions, with ‘essences’ ratherthan mental or linguistic contents (see the supplementary section onPlato), but conceptual analysis, too, has frequently been given a‘realist’ construal. Certainly, the roots of conceptualanalysis can be traced back to Plato’s search for definitions,as we shall see inSection 4.

Ancient Greek methodologies can be fruitfully compared withmethodologies in other philosophical traditions. In ancient Chinesephilosophy, for example, there is no Chinese character that couldobviously be translated as ‘analysis’, but there wasclearly a concern with finding reasons for things, which involvedidentifying and formulating principles, which suggests something akinto the regressive conception of analysis. There was also concern withhow names divide things up, which bears comparison with Plato’smethod of division, and in the Mohist tradition, with providingdefinitions of key concepts, such as mathematical and epistemicconcepts, and with certain forms of argumentation (see thesupplementary section onAncient Chinese Philosophy).

In ancient Indian philosophy, a web of analytic methodologies beginsto be woven to rival those in ancient Greek philosophy in the areas oflanguage, logic and epistemology. Here the key inspiration is notGreek geometrical analysis but Sanskrit grammatical analysis, firstsystematized by Pāṇini in theAṣṭādhyāyī (Book in EightChapters) in the fifth centuryBCE. Rules areformulated for grammatical transformations, which form the basis forthe sophisticated linguistic analyses that are used in the developmentof Indian logic and the Nyāya school of philosophy (see thesupplementary sections onAncient Indian Philosophy andMedieval Indian Philosophy). This leads to the emergence of a rich Indian tradition of analyticphilosophy in the early modern period that precedes by severalcenturies the emergence of the analytic tradition in the West thatoriginates in the work of Frege, Russell and Moore (see thesupplementary section onIndian Analytic Philosophy).

Further discussion can be found in the supplementary document on

Ancient Conceptions of Analysis.

Further reading can be found in the

Annotated Bibliography, §2.

3. Medieval and Renaissance Conceptions of Analysis

While the early medieval period in Europe was something of a dark agefor philosophy, it thrived in other parts of the world. Indeed, wereit not for the Arabic philosophers in the eleventh and twelfthcenturies, who were the main source of the transmission of Greekphilosophy, the dark age would have lasted longer. There was no suchdark age in Indian philosophy, and the division between‘ancient’ and ‘medieval’ is problematicanyway, as there was a continual development from its beginnings intheUpaniṣads, and a fascinating debate between thevarious Vedic and Buddhist schools that deepened well into the modernperiod. This debate centred on the inference-schema first formulatedby Gautama in the second centuryCE, which was analysedinto five components by the Nyāya school, the school of logic andepistemology that evolved into the analytic philosophy of early modernIndia, and into three components by the Buddhists. There is a strikingsimilarity between this inference-schema and one of the basic forms ofAristotelian syllogistic theory, but there are also crucialdifferences, reflected in the different natures of Sanskrit and Greekgrammar, at least as they were understood by Indian and Greekscholars, respectively.

Buddhism began influencing Chinese philosophy from the first centuryCE and there was explicit reflection on the nature ofdecompositional analysis—of a whole into its parts. Fazang,writing in the seventh century, using two famous metaphors, of astatue of a golden lion and of a rafter forming part of a building,argued that the relationship between a whole and its parts has sixcharacteristics, some of which might seem counterintuitive until weappreciate theinterdependence of a whole and all its parts.In the Neo-Confucianism that sought to respond to Buddhist and Daoistattacks on early Confucianism, this interdependence claim was embeddedin a conception oflǐ (理), understood as the‘pattern’ or ‘principle’ that unifies andunderlies all things, a conception that can be compared to theNeoplatonist conception of the One or God, to which everything canultimately be traced back. Here we have clear articulations of aconnective conception of analysis.

As far as the later medieval and renaissance periods in Europe areconcerned, conceptions of analysis were largely influenced by ancientGreek thought. Knowledge of these conceptions was often second-hand,however, filtered through a variety of commentaries and texts thatwere not always reliable. Medieval and renaissance methodologiestended to be uneasy mixtures of Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic,Galenic, and Neoplatonic elements, many of them claiming to have someroot in the geometrical conception of analysis and synthesis. However,in the late medieval period, clearer and more original forms ofanalysis started to take shape. In the literature on so-called‘syncategoremata’ and ‘exponibilia’, forexample, we can trace the development of a conception of interpretiveanalysis. Sentences involving more than one quantifier such as‘Some donkey every man sees’, for example, were recognizedas ambiguous, requiring ‘exposition’ to clarify. Thisparallels similar developments in Indian logic, where sentencesinvolving quantifiers were reformulated in language that increasinglybecame more technical, building on the grammatical analyses thatsuccessive Sanskrit scholars had offered.

In John Buridan’s masterpiece of the mid-fourteenth century, theSummulae de Dialectica, we can find three of the fourconceptions outlined inSection 1.1 above. He distinguishes explicitly between divisions, definitions,and demonstrations, corresponding to decompositional, interpretive,and regressive analysis, respectively. Here, in particular, we haveanticipations of modern analytic philosophy as much as reworkings ofancient philosophy. Unfortunately, however, these clearer forms ofanalysis became overshadowed during the Renaissance, despite—orperhaps because of—the growing interest in the original Greeksources. As far as understanding analytic methodologies was concerned,the humanist repudiation of scholastic logic muddied the waters.

Further discussion can be found in the supplementary document on

Medieval and Renaissance Conceptions of Analysis.

Further reading can be found in the

Annotated Bibliography, §3.

4. Early Modern Conceptions of Analysis

In Europe, the scientific revolution in the seventeenth centurybrought with it new forms of analysis. The newest of these emergedthrough the development of more sophisticated mathematical techniques,but even these still had their roots in earlier conceptions ofanalysis. By the end of the early modern period, decompositionalanalysis had become dominant (as outlined in what follows), but this,too, took different forms, and the relationships between the variousconceptions of analysis were often far from clear.

In common with the Renaissance, the early modern period in Europe wasmarked by a great concern with methodology. This might seemunsurprising in such a revolutionary period, when new techniques forunderstanding the world were being developed and that understandingitself was being transformed. But what characterizes many of thetreatises and remarks on methodology that appeared in the seventeenthcentury is their appeal, frequently self-conscious, to ancient methods(despite, or perhaps—for diplomatic reasons—because of,the critique of thecontent of traditional thought), althoughnew wine was generally poured into the old bottles. The model ofgeometrical analysis was a particular inspiration here, albeitfiltered through the Aristotelian tradition, which had assimilated theregressive process of going from theorems to axioms with that ofmoving from effects to causes (see the supplementary section onAristotle). Analysis came to be seen as a method of discovery, working back fromwhat is ordinarily known to the underlying reasons (demonstrating‘the fact’), and synthesis as a method of proof, workingforwards again from what is discovered to what needed explanation(demonstrating ‘the reason why’). Analysis and synthesiswere thus taken as complementary, although there remained disagreementover their respective merits.

There is a manuscript by Galileo, dating from around 1589, anappropriated commentary on Aristotle’sPosteriorAnalytics, which shows his concern with methodology, andregressive analysis, in particular (see Wallace 1992a and 1992b).Hobbes wrote a chapter on method in the first part ofDeCorpore, published in 1655, which offers his own interpretationof the method of analysis and synthesis, where decompositional formsof analysis are articulated alongside regressive forms {Quotations}. But perhaps the most influential account of methodology, from themiddle of the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenthcentury, was the fourth part of the Port-RoyalLogic, thefirst edition of which appeared in 1662 and the final revised editionin 1683. Chapter 2 (which was the first chapter in the first edition)opens as follows:

The art of arranging a series of thoughts properly, either fordiscovering the truth when we do not know it, or for proving to otherswhat we already know, can generally be called method.

Hence there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth,which is known asanalysis, or themethod ofresolution, and which can also be called themethod ofdiscovery. The other is for making the truth understood by othersonce it is found. This is known assynthesis, or themethod of composition, and can also be called themethodof instruction. {Fuller Quotations}

That a number of different methods might be assimilated here is notnoted, although the text does go on to distinguish four main types of‘issues concerning things’: seeking causes by theireffects, seeking effects by their causes, finding the whole from theparts, and looking for another part from the whole and a given part(ibid., 234). While the first two involve regressive analysis andsynthesis, the third and fourth involve decompositional analysis andsynthesis—or decompositional and connective analysis, as wemight also understand it.

As the authors of theLogic make clear, this particular partof their text derives from Descartes’sRules for theDirection of the Mind, written around 1627, but only publishedposthumously in 1684. The specification of the four types was mostlikely offered in elaborating Descartes’s Rule Thirteen, whichstates: “If we perfectly understand a problem we must abstractit from every superfluous conception, reduce it to its simplest termsand, by means of an enumeration, divide it up into the smallestpossible parts” (PW, I, 51. Cf. the editorial commentsinPW, I, 54, 77). The decompositional conception of analysisis explicit here, and if we follow this up into the laterDiscourse on Method, published in 1637, the focus has clearlyshifted from the regressive to the decompositional conception ofanalysis. All the rules offered in the earlier work have now beenreduced to just four. This is how Descartes reports the rules he sayshe adopted in his scientific and philosophical work:

The first was never to accept anything as true if I did not haveevident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoidprecipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothingmore in my judgements than what presented itself to my mind so clearlyand so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.

The second, to divide each of the difficulties I examined into as manyparts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve thembetter.

The third, to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginningwith the simplest and most easily known objects in the order to ascendlittle by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most complex, andby supposing some order even among objects that have no natural orderof precedence.

And the last, throughout to make enumerations so complete, and reviewsso comprehensive, that I could be sure of leaving nothing out.(PW, I, 120.)

The first two are rules of analysis (decompositional analysis) and thesecond two rules of synthesis (connective analysis). But although theanalysis/synthesis structure remains, what is involved here isdecomposition/composition (decomposition/connection) rather thanregression/progression. Nevertheless, Descartes insisted that it wasgeometry that influenced him here: “Those long chains composedof very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use toarrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasionto suppose that all the things which can fall under human knowledgeare interconnected in the same way” (Ibid. {Further Quotations}).

Descartes’s geometry did indeed involve the breaking down ofcomplex problems into simpler ones. More significant, however, was hisuse of algebra in developing ‘analytic’ geometry as itcame to be called, which allowed geometrical problems to betransformed into arithmetical ones and more easily solved. Inrepresenting the ‘unknown’ to be found by‘x’, we can see the central role played inanalysis by the idea of taking something as ‘given’ andworking back from that, which made it seem appropriate to regardalgebra as an ‘art of analysis’, alluding to theregressive conception of the ancients. Illustrated in analyticgeometry in its developed form, then, we can see all four of theconceptions of analysis outlined inSection 1.1 above, despite Descartes’s own emphasis on the decompositionalconception. For further discussion of this, see the supplementarysection onDescartes and Analytic Geometry.

Descartes’s emphasis on decompositional analysis was not withoutprecedents, however. Not only was it already involved in ancient Greekgeometry, but it was also implicit in Plato’s method ofcollection and division. We might explain the shift from regressive todecompositional (conceptual) analysis, as well as the connectionbetween the two, in the following way. Consider a simple example, asrepresented in the diagram below, ‘collecting’ all animalsand ‘dividing’ them intorational andnon-rational, in order to define human beings as rationalanimals.

On this model, in seeking to define anything, we work back up theappropriate classificatory hierarchy to find the higher (i.e., morebasic or more general) ‘Forms’, by means of which we canlay down the definition. Although Plato did not himself use the term‘analysis’—the word for ‘division’ was‘dihairesis’—the finding of the appropriate‘Forms’ is essentially analysis. As an elaboration of theSocratic search for definitions, we clearly have in this the originsof conceptual analysis. There is little disagreement that ‘Humanbeings are rational animals’ is the kind of definition we areseeking, defining one concept, the concepthuman being, interms of other concepts, the conceptsrational andanimal. But the construals that have been offered of thishave been more problematic. Understanding a classificatory hierarchyextensionally, that is, in terms of the classes of thingsdenoted, the classes higher up are clearly the larger,‘containing’ the classes lower down as subclasses (e.g.,the class of animals includes the class of human beings as one of itssubclasses).Intensionally, however, the relationship of‘containment’ has been seen as holding in the oppositedirection. If someone understands the concepthuman being, atleast in the strong sense of knowing its definition, then they mustunderstand the conceptsanimal andrational; and ithas often then seemed natural to talk of the concepthumanbeing as ‘containing’ the conceptsrationalandanimal. Working back up the hierarchy in‘analysis’ (in the regressive sense) could then come to beidentified with ‘unpacking’ or ‘decomposing’ aconcept into its ‘constituent’ concepts(‘analysis’ in the decompositional sense). Of course,talking of ‘decomposing’ a concept into its‘constituents’ is, strictly speaking, only a metaphor (asQuine was famously to remark in §1 of ‘Two Dogmas ofEmpiricism’), but in the early modern period, this began to betaken more literally.

As far as the history of analytic philosophy is concerned, however,the most significant development in the early modern period was theemergence of Indian analytic philosophy, as it should undoubtedly becharacterized. Building on Gaṅgeśa’sfourteenth-century text,Jewel of Reflection on the Truth(Tattvacintāmaṇi), the earlier work of theNyāya school, which had focused on logic and epistemology, waselaborated with ever greater technical sophistication into what becameknown as the Navya-Nyāya or new Nyāya school. No one whoreads their commentaries and expositions can fail to be struck by howclosely their concerns match those of analytic philosophers today (seethe entry onAnalytic Philosophy in Early Modern India). Not only do we find conceptual analysis being pursued, in the senseof seeking necessary and sufficient conditions for the application ofkey philosophical concepts, but there is also explicit use ofinterpretive analysis in finding precise formulations to resolvephilosophical debates, especially in responding to the epistemologicalscepticism of the Buddhists.

There was similar concern to counteract the influence of Buddhism inearly modern Chinese philosophy, where it took the form of developingnew versions of Confucianism. Dai Zhen was the most significantfigure, his work characterized by seeking to uncover the originalmeaning of Confucianism in the ancient texts, by careful philologicalanalysis that also sifted out the wheat from the chaff—as Daisaw it—in the extensive commentaries on those texts. Dai talksexplicitly of a ‘principle of analysis’, as‘fēnlǐ’ (分理) might betranslated, ‘fēn’ (分) meaning‘divide’ or ‘separate’, forming the first partoffēnxī’ (分析), as used inChinese today for ‘analysis’ or ‘analyse’,where ‘xī’ (析) means‘divide’ or ‘separate’, too. This is clearly‘analysis’ in its decompositional sense, but Dai sawidentifying the parts of something as essential in understanding the‘pattern’ (lǐ 理) that unifies thoseparts, so a connective conception of analysis is also at workhere.

For further discussion, see the supplementary document on

Early Modern Conceptions of Analysis.

For further reading, see the

Annotated Bibliography, §4.

5. Modern Conceptions of Analysis, outside Analytic Philosophy

As suggested in the supplementary document onKant, both the decompositional and regressive conceptions of analysis foundtheir classic statements in the work of Kant at the end of theeighteenth century. But Kant was only expressing conceptionswidespread in Europe at the time. The decompositional conception canbe found in a very blatant form, for example, in the writings of MosesMendelssohn, for whom, unlike Kant, it was applicable even in the caseof geometry {Quotation}. Typified in Kant’s and Mendelssohn’s view of concepts, itwas also reflected in scientific practice. Indeed, its popularity wasfostered by the chemical revolution inaugurated by Lavoisier in thelate eighteenth century, the comparison between philosophical analysisand chemical analysis being frequently drawn. As Lichtenberg put it,“Whichever way you look at it, philosophy is always analyticalchemistry” {Quotation}. The regressive conception, meanwhile, is given a particularly clearformulation in the work of Johann Heinrich Lambert {Quotation}.

This decompositional conception of analysis set the methodologicalagenda for philosophical approaches and debates in the (late) modernperiod (from the nineteenth century onwards) in Europe. Responses anddevelopments, very broadly, can be divided into two. On the one hand,an essentially decompositional conception of analysis was accepted,but a critical attitude was adopted towards it. If analysis simplyinvolved breaking something down, then it appeared destructive andlife-diminishing, and the critique of analysis that this viewengendered was a common theme in idealism and romanticism in all itsmain varieties—from German, British, and French to NorthAmerican. One finds it reflected, for example, in remarks about thenegating and soul-destroying power of analytical thinking by Schiller {Quotation}, de Staël {Quotation}, Hegel {Quotation}, and de Chardin {Quotation}, in Bradley’s doctrine that analysis is falsification {Quotation}, and in the emphasis placed by Bergson on ‘intuition’ {Quotation}.

On the other hand, analysis was seen more positively, but the Kantiandecompositional conception underwent a certain degree of modificationand development. In the nineteenth century, this was exemplified, inparticular, by Bolzano and the neo-Kantians. Bolzano’s mostimportant innovation was the method of variation, which involvesconsidering what happens to the truth-value of a sentence when aconstituent term is substituted by another. This formed the basis forhis reconstruction of the analytic/synthetic distinction, Kant’saccount of which, with respect to judgements, he found defective. Theneo-Kantians emphasized the role of structure in conceptualizedexperience and had a greater appreciation of forms of analysis inmathematics and science. In many ways, their work attempts to dojustice to philosophical and scientific practice while recognizing thecentral idealist claim that analysis is a kind of abstraction thatinevitably involves falsification or distortion. On the neo-Kantianview, the complexity of experience is a complexity of form and contentrather than of separable constituents, requiring analysis into‘moments’ or ‘aspects’ rather than‘elements’ or ‘parts’. In the 1910s, the ideawas articulated with great subtlety by Ernst Cassirer {Quotation}, and became familiar in Gestalt psychology.

The Kantian regressive conception of analysis, too, underwentmodification and development, as can be seen, for example, in theworks of his idealist successor, J. G. Fichte. Although Kant wrote theProlegomena according to the analytic or regressive method,he nonetheless maintained that the proper method of a scientificphilosophy is synthetic or progressive {Quotation}. In opposition to this, Fichte, in his introductory remarks to Part IIof hisFoundation to the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, statesthat the philosophical investigations that follow can only beconducted according to an analytic method. This is because, as Fichteexplains, these investigations are reflective discoveries ofindividual intellectual acts that are already present andsynthetically unified within a larger whole, which whole is thecondition for the possibility of these reflective investigations inthe first place (FGA, I, 2, 283–5). Fichte thusmodifies the Kantian conception of regressive analysis by combining itwith the decompositional and connective conceptions. His method isanalytic in the regressive sense in that it is a reflection aimed atarticulating its own condition of possibility, analytic in thedecompositional sense in that it is a decomposition of a syntheticallyunified whole into its component acts, and analytic in the connectivesense in that these component acts are always related to thesynthetically unified whole they comprise.

In the twentieth century, both (Western) analytic philosophy andphenomenology can be seen as developing far more sophisticatedconceptions of analysis, which draw on but go beyond meredecompositional analysis. The followingSection offers an account of analysis in analytic philosophy, illustratingthe range and richness of the conceptions and practices that arose.But it is important to see these in the wider context oftwentieth-century methodological practices and debates, for it is notjust in ‘analytic’ philosophy—despite itsname—that analytic methods are accorded a central role.Phenomenology, in particular, contains its own distinctive set ofanalytic methods, with similarities and differences to those ofanalytic philosophy. Phenomenological analysis has frequently beencompared to conceptual clarification in the ordinary languagetradition, for example, and the method of ‘phenomenologicalreduction’ that Husserl invented in 1905 offers a strikingparallel to the reductive project opened up by Russell’s theoryof descriptions, which also made its appearance in 1905.

Just like Frege and Russell, Husserl’s initial concern was withthe foundations of mathematics, and in this shared concern we can seethe continued influence of the regressive conception of analysis.According to Husserl, the aim of ‘eidetic reduction’, ashe called it, was to isolate the ‘essences’ that underlieour various forms of thinking, and to apprehend them by‘essential intuition’(‘Wesenserschauung’). The terminology may bedifferent, but this resembles Russell’s early project toidentify the ‘indefinables’ of philosophical logic, as hedescribed it, and to apprehend them by ‘acquaintance’ (cf.POM, xx). Furthermore, in Husserl’s later discussion of‘explication’ (cf.EJ, §§ 22–4 {Quotations}), we find appreciation of the ‘transformative’ dimension ofanalysis, which can be fruitfully compared with Carnap’s accountof explication (see the supplementary section onRudolf Carnap and Logical Positivism). Carnap himself describes Husserl’s idea here as one of“the synthesis of identification between a confused,nonarticulated sense and a subsequently intended distinct, articulatedsense” (1950, 3 {Quotation}).

Phenomenology is not the only source of analytic methodologies outsidethose of the analytic tradition. Mention might be made here, too, ofR. G. Collingwood, working within the tradition of British idealism,which was still a powerful force prior to the Second World War. In hisEssay on Philosophical Method (1933), for example, hecriticizes Moorean philosophy, and develops his own response to whatis essentially the paradox of analysis (concerning how an analysis canbe both correct and informative), which he recognizes as having itsroot in Meno’s paradox. In hisEssay on Metaphysics(1940), he puts forward his own conception of metaphysical analysis,in direct response to what he perceived as the mistaken repudiation ofmetaphysics by the logical positivists. Metaphysical analysis ischaracterized here as the detection of ‘absolutepresuppositions’, which are taken as underlying and shaping thevarious conceptual practices that can be identified in the history ofphilosophy and science (see Beaney 2005). Even among those explicitlycritical of central strands in analytic philosophy, then, analysis inone form or another can still be seen as alive and well.

When it comes to the various traditions of Asian philosophy, theirfurther development was disrupted by colonialism, which decimated theIndian analytic tradition, for example. There was argument about therespective merits of Indian and European forms of logic and analysis,reflected in debates about the so-called ‘Hindusyllogism’, which led some Indian philosophers to return to theolder, Vedic sources of philosophy to find something that was moredistinctive and hence less readily comparable to Western forms ofphilosophy, by which it always seemed (mistakenly) to come offsecond-best. It was not until the 1970s, in the pioneering work of B.K. Matilal, that the Indian analytic tradition finally began to berecognized in the West (see the supplementary section onIndian Philosophy).

Colonialism also had a transformative effect on Chinese philosophy. Asthe Qing dynasty disintegrated around the turn of the twentiethcentury, there was growing rejection of Confucianism and a turntowards the West for social and cultural renewal. Western logical andphilosophical texts were translated, and a new generation of Chineseintellectuals returned from studying in Europe and the US to introducenew ideas and reconstruct their own historical traditions to offer newresources for understanding and changing the present (see thesupplementary section onChinese Philosophy).

For further discussion, see the supplementary document on

Modern Conceptions of Analysis, outside Analytic Philosophy.

For further reading, see the

Annotated Bibliography, §5.

6. Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy

If anything characterizes ‘analytic’ philosophy in theWest, then it is presumably the emphasis placed on analysis. But asthe foregoing sections have shown, there is a wide range ofconceptions of analysis, so such a characterization says nothing thatwould distinguish analytic philosophy from much of what has eitherpreceded or developed alongside it. Given that the decompositionalconception is frequently offered as the main conception today, itmight be thought that it is this that characterizes analyticphilosophy. But this conception was prevalent in the early modernperiod, shared by both the British Empiricists and Leibniz, forexample. Given that Kant denied the importance of decompositionalanalysis, however, it might be suggested that what characterizesanalytic philosophy is thevalue it places on such analysis.This might be true of Moore’s early work, and of one strandwithin analytic philosophy; but it is not generally true. Whatcharacterizes analytic philosophy as it was founded by Frege andRussell is the role played bylogical analysis, whichdepended on the development of modern logic. Although other andsubsequent forms of analysis, such as linguistic analysis, were lesswedded to systems of formal logic, the central insight motivatinglogical analysis remained.

Pappus’s account of method in ancient Greek geometry suggeststhat the regressive conception of analysis was dominant at thetime—however much other conceptions may also have beenimplicitly involved (see the supplementary section onAncient Greek Geometry). In the early modern period, the decompositional conception becamewidespread (seeSection 4). What characterizes analytic philosophy—or at least that centralstrand that originates in the work of Frege and Russell—is therecognition of what was called earlier theinterpretive ortransformative dimension of analysis (seeSection 1.1). Any analysis presupposes a particular framework of interpretation,and work is done ininterpreting what we are seeking toanalyse as part of the process of regression and decomposition. Thismay involvetransforming it in some way, in order for theresources of a given theory or conceptual framework to be brought tobear. Euclidean geometry provides a good illustration of this. But itis even more obvious in the case of analytic geometry, where thegeometrical problem is first ‘translated’ into thelanguage of algebra and arithmetic in order to solve it more easily(see the supplementary section onDescartes and Analytic Geometry). What Descartes and Fermat did for analytic geometry, Frege andRussell did for analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is‘analytic’ much more in the sense that analytic geometryis ‘analytic’ than in the crude decompositional sense thatKant understood it.

The interpretive dimension of modern philosophical analysis can alsobe seen as anticipated in medieval scholasticism (see thesupplementary section onMedieval European Philosophy), and it is remarkable just how much of modern concerns withpropositions, meaning, reference, and so on, can be found in themedieval literature. They can also be found in early modern Indianphilosophy (see the supplementary section onIndian Analytic Philosophy). Interpretive analysis is also illustrated in the nineteenth centuryby Bentham’s conception ofparaphrasis, which hecharacterized as “that sort of exposition which may be affordedby transmuting into a proposition, having for its subject some realentity, a proposition which has not for its subject any other than afictitious entity” [Full Quotation]. He applied the idea in ‘analysing away’ talk of‘obligations’, and the anticipation that we can see hereof Russell’s theory of descriptions has been noted by, amongothers, Wisdom (1931) and Quine in ‘Five Milestones ofEmpiricism’ [Quotation].

What was crucial in the emergence of twentieth-century analyticphilosophy, however, was the development of quantificational theory,which provided a far more powerful interpretive system than anythingthat had hitherto been available. In the case of Frege and Russell,the system into which statements were ‘translated’ waspredicate logic, and the divergence that was thereby opened up betweengrammatical and logical form meant that the process of translationitself became an issue of philosophical concern. This induced greaterself-consciousness about our use of language and its potential tomislead us, and inevitably raised semantic, epistemological andmetaphysical questions about the relationships between language,logic, thought and reality which have been at the core of analyticphilosophy ever since.

Both Frege and Russell (after the latter’s initial flirtationwith idealism) were concerned to show, against Kant, that arithmeticis a system of analytic and not synthetic truths. In theGrundlagen, Frege had offered a revised conception ofanalyticity, which arguably endorses and generalizes Kant’slogical as opposed to phenomenological criterion, i.e.,(AN_L) rather than (AN_O) (see the supplementarysection onKant):

(AN) A truth isanalytic if its proof depends only on generallogical laws and definitions.

The question of whether arithmetical truths are analytic then comesdown to the question of whether they can be derived purely logically.(Here we already have ‘transformation’, at the theoreticallevel—involving a reinterpretation of the concept ofanalyticity.) To demonstrate this, Frege realized that he needed todevelop logical theory in order to formalize mathematical statements,which typically involve multiple generality (e.g., ‘Everynatural number has a successor’, i.e. ‘For every naturalnumberx there is another natural numbery that isthe successor ofx’). This development, by extendingthe use of function-argument analysis in mathematics to logic andproviding a notation for quantification, was essentially theachievement of his first book, theBegriffsschrift (1879),where he not only created the first system of predicate logic butalso, using it, succeeded in giving a logical analysis of mathematicalinduction (see FregeFR, 47–78).

In his second book,Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884),Frege went on to provide a logical analysis of number statements. Hiscentral idea was that a number statement contains an assertion about aconcept. A statement such as ‘Jupiter has four moons’ isto be understood not as predicating of Jupiter the property of havingfour moons, but as predicating of the conceptmoon of Jupiterthe second-level propertyhas four instances, which can belogically defined. The significance of this construal can be broughtout by considering negative existential statements (which areequivalent to number statements involving the number 0). Take thefollowing negative existential statement:

(0a) Unicorns do not exist.

If we attempt to analyse thisdecompositionally, taking itsgrammatical form to mirror its logical form, then we find ourselvesasking what these unicorns are that have the property ofnon-existence. We may then be forced to posit thesubsistence—as opposed toexistence—ofunicorns, just as Meinong and the early Russell did, in order forthere to be something that is the subject of our statement. On theFregean account, however, to deny that something exists is to say thatthe relevantconcept has no instances: there is no need toposit any mysteriousobject. The Fregean analysis of (0a)consists inrephrasing it into (0b), which can then bereadily formalized in the new logic as (0c):

(0b) The conceptunicorn is not instantiated.

(0c) ~(∃x)Fx.

Similarly, to say that God exists is to say that the conceptGod is (uniquely) instantiated, i.e., to deny that theconcept has 0 instances (or 2 or more instances). On this view,existence is no longer seen as a (first-level) predicate, but instead,existential statements are analysed in terms of the (second-level)predicateis instantiated, represented by means of theexistential quantifier. As Frege notes, this offers a neat diagnosisof what is wrong with the ontological argument, at least in itstraditional form (GL, §53). All the problems that ariseif we try to apply decompositional analysis (at least straight off)simply drop away, although an account is still needed, of course, ofconcepts and quantifiers.

The possibilities that this strategy of ‘translating’ intoa logical language opens up are enormous: we are no longer forced totreat the surface grammatical form of a statement as a guide to its‘real’ form, and are provided with a means of representingthat form. This is the value of logical analysis: it allows us to‘analyse away’ problematic linguistic expressions andexplain what it is ‘really’ going on. This strategy wasemployed, most famously, in Russell’s theory of descriptions,which was a major motivation behind the ideas of Wittgenstein’sTractatus (see the supplementary sections onBertrand Russell andLudwig Wittgenstein). Although subsequent philosophers were to question the assumption thatthere could ever be a definitive logical analysis of a givenstatement, the idea that ordinary language may be systematicallymisleading has remained.

To illustrate this, consider the following examples from Ryle’sclassic 1932 paper, ‘Systematically MisleadingExpressions’:

(Ua) Unpunctuality is reprehensible.

(Ta) Jones hates the thought of going to hospital.

In each case, we might be tempted to make unnecessary reifications,taking ‘unpunctuality’ and ‘the thought of going tohospital’ as referring to objects. It is because of this thatRyle describes such expressions as ‘systematicallymisleading’. (Ua) and (Ta) must therefore be rephrased:

(Ub) Whoever is unpunctual deserves that other people should reprovehim for being unpunctual.

(Tb) Jones feels distressed when he thinks of what he will undergo ifhe goes to hospital.

In these formulations, there is no overt talk at all of‘unpunctuality’ or ‘thoughts’, and hencenothing to tempt us to posit the existence of any correspondingentities. The problems that otherwise arise have thus been‘analysed away’.

At the time that Ryle wrote ‘Systematically MisleadingExpressions’, he, too, assumed that every statement had anunderlying logical form that was to be exhibited in its‘correct’ formulation [Quotations]. But when he gave up this assumption (for reasons indicated in thesupplementary section onSusan Stebbing and the Cambridge School of Analysis), he did not give up the motivating idea of logical analysis—toshow what is wrong with misleading expressions. InThe Concept ofMind (1949), for example, he sought to explain what he called the‘category-mistake’ involved in talk of the mind as a kindof ‘Ghost in the Machine’. His aim, he wrote, was to“rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we alreadypossess” (1949, 9), an idea that was to lead to the articulationofconnective rather thanreductive conceptions ofanalysis, the emphasis being placed on elucidating the relationshipsbetween concepts without assuming that there is a privileged set ofintrinsically basic concepts (see the supplementary section onOxford Linguistic Philosophy).

What these various forms of logical analysis suggest, then, is thatwhat characterizes analysis in analytic philosophy is something farricher than the mere ‘decomposition’ of a concept into its‘constituents’. But this is not to say that thedecompositional conception of analysis plays no role at all. It can befound in the early work of Moore, for example (see the supplementarysection onG. E. Moore). It might also be seen as reflected in the approach to the analysis ofconcepts that seeks to specify the necessary and sufficient conditionsfor their correct employment. Conceptual analysis in this sense goesback to the Socrates of Plato’s early dialogues (see thesupplementary section onPlato). But it arguably reached its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Asmentioned inSection 2 above, the definition of ‘knowledge’ as ‘justifiedtrue belief’ is perhaps the most famous example, although theclaim made by Gettier in his classic paper of 1963 in criticizing thisdefinition that it was the dominant conception is now recognized ashistorically false. (For details of this, see the entry in thisEncyclopedia onThe Analysis of Knowledge.) The specification of necessary and sufficient conditions may nolonger be seen as the primary aim of conceptual analysis, especiallyin the case of philosophical concepts such as ‘knowledge’,which are fiercely contested; but consideration of such conditionsremains a useful tool in the analytic philosopher’s toolbag.

For a more detailed account of these and related conceptions ofanalysis, see the supplementary document on

Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy.

For further reading, see the

Annotated Bibliography, §6.

7. Conclusion

The history of philosophy reveals a rich source of conceptions ofanalysis. The origin of analytic methodology in the West lay inancient Greek geometry, but it developed in different though relatedways in the two Greek traditions stemming from Plato and Aristotle,the former based on the search for definitions and the latter on theidea of regression to first causes. The origin of analytic methodologyin India lay in Sanskrit grammar, and it developed through elaborationof the inference-schema of theNyāya school of logic andepistemology, which in turn influenced Chinese philosophy throughBuddhism. These traditions defined methodological space until wellinto the early modern period, and indeed, in the Indian tradition,reached its high point in the analytic philosophy developed by theNavya-Nyāya school. The creation of analytic geometry inthe seventeenth century introduced a more reductive form of analysisin Europe, and an analogous and even more powerful form was introducedaround the turn of the twentieth century in the logical work of Fregeand Russell. Although conceptual analysis, construed decompositionallyfrom the time of Leibniz and Kant, and mediated by the work of Moore,is often viewed as characteristic of analytic philosophy, logicalanalysis, taken as involving translation into a logical system, iswhat inaugurated the analytic tradition in Europe. Analysis has alsofrequently been seen as reductive, but connective forms of analysisare no less important, not least in reflecting the complementarity ofanalysis and synthesis. As shown in this entry, connective analysis,historically inflected, would seem to be particularly appropriate inanalysing analysis itself.

Bibliography

What follows here is a selection of forty classic and recent workspublished over the last half-century or so that offer representativecover of the range of different conceptions of analysis in the historyof philosophy. A fuller bibliography, which includes all referencescited, is provided as a set of supplementary documents, divided tocorrespond to the sections of this entry:

Annotated Bibliography on Analysis

• Anderson, R. Lanier, 2015,The Poverty of Conceptual Truth:Kant’s Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits ofMetaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Baker, Gordon, 2004,Wittgenstein’sMethod, Oxford: Blackwell, especially essays 1, 3, 4, 10, 12
• Baldwin, Thomas, 1990,G. E. Moore, London: Routledge,ch. 7
• Beaney, Michael, 2005, ‘Collingwood’s Conception ofPresuppositional Analysis,’Collingwood and British IdealismStudies 11.2: 41–114
• –––, (ed.), 2007,The Analytic Turn:Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, London:Routledge [includes papers on Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, C. I.Lewis, Bolzano, Husserl]
• –––, (ed), 2013,The Oxford Handbook of theHistory of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress
• –––, 2017,Analytic Philosophy: A Very ShortIntroduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Byrne, Patrick H., 1997,Analysis and Science inAristotle, Albany: State University of New York Press
• Cohen, L. Jonathan, 1986,The Dialogue of Reason: An Analysisof Analytical Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, chs.1–2
• Dummett, Michael, 1991,Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics,London: Duckworth, chs. 3–4, 9–16
• Engfer, Hans-Jürgen, 1982,Philosophie als Analysis,Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog [Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff,Kant]
• Fung, Yiu-ming, (ed.), 2020,Dao Companion to ChinesePhilosophy of Logic, Switzerland: Springer
• Ganeri, Jonardon, (ed.), 2001,Indian Logic: A Reader,London: Routledge
• –––, 2011,The Lost Age of Reason:Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450–1700, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press
• Garrett, Aaron V., 2003,Meaning in Spinoza’sMethod, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 4
• Gaukroger, Stephen, 1989,Cartesian Logic, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, ch. 3
• Gentzler, Jyl, (ed.), 1998,Method in Ancient Philosophy,Oxford: Oxford University Press [includes papers on Socrates, Plato,Aristotle, mathematics and medicine]
• Hacker, P. M. S., 1996,Wittgenstein’s Place inTwentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell
• Hintikka, Jaakko and Remes, Unto, 1974,The Method ofAnalysis, Dordrecht: D. Reidel [ancient Greek geometricalanalysis]
• Hylton, Peter, 2005,Propositions, Functions, Analysis:Selected Essays on Russell’s Philosophy, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press
• –––, 2007,Quine, London: Routledge,ch. 9
• Jackson, Frank, 1998,From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence ofConceptual Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, chs.2–3
• Kretzmann, Norman, 1982, ‘Syncategoremata, exponibilia,sophistimata,’ in N. Kretzmannet al., (eds.),TheCambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 211–45
• Krishna, Daya, 1997,Indian Philosophy: A New Approach,Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications
• Lapointe, Sandra, 2011,Bolzano’s TheoreticalPhilosophy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna, 2005,Epistemology, Logic, and Grammarin Indian Philosophical Analysis, 2nd edn., ed. Jonardon Ganeri,Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1st edn. 1971
• Menn, Stephen, 2002, ‘Plato and the Method ofAnalysis,’Phronesis 47: 193–223
• Mou, Bo, (ed.), 2001,Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese andAnalytic Philosophical Traditions, Chicago: Open Court
• Otte, Michael and Panza, Marco, (eds.), 1997,Analysis andSynthesis in Mathematics, Dordrecht: Kluwer
• Rorty, Richard, (ed.), 1967,The Linguistic Turn,Chicago: University of Chicago Press [includes papers on analyticmethodology]
• Rosen, Stanley, 1980,The Limits of Analysis, New York:Basic Books, repr. Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000[critique of analytic philosophy from a ‘continental’perspective]
• Sayre, Kenneth M., 1969,Plato’s AnalyticMethod, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• –––, 2006,Metaphysics and Method inPlato’s Statesman, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, Part I
• Strawson, P. F., 1992,Analysis and Metaphysics: AnIntroduction to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, chs.1–2
• Sweeney, Eileen C., 1994, ‘Three Notions ofResolutio and the Structure of Reasoning in Aquinas,’The Thomist 58: 197–243
• Timmermans, Benoît, 1995,La résolution desproblèmes de Descartes à Kant, Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France
• Urmson, J. O., 1956,Philosophical Analysis: Its Developmentbetween the Two World Wars, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Wilson, Fred, 1990,Psychological Analysis and the Philosophyof John Stuart Mill, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• Zhang, Dainian, 2002,Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy,tr. and ed. Edmund Ryden, New Haven: Yale University Press, orig.publ. in Chinese in 1948; rev. edn. 1989

Academic Tools

	How to cite this entry.
	Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
	Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
	Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

• Analysis, a journal in philosophy
• Bertrand Russell Archives
• Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen

Related Entries

abstract objects |analytic/synthetic distinction |Aristotle |Bolzano, Bernard |Buridan, John [Jean] |Descartes, René |descriptions |Early Modern India, analytic philosophy in |Fichte, Johann Gottlieb |Frege, Gottlob |Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |Kant, Immanuel |knowledge: analysis of |Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm |logical constructions |logical form |Merleau-Ponty, Maurice |Moore, George Edward |necessary and sufficient conditions |Ockham [Occam], William |Plato |Russell, Bertrand |Stebbing, Susan |Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Acknowledgments

This entry was first composed by Michael Beaney in 2002–3 andupdated in 2007 and 2014: acknowledgements for each of these can befound in the archived versions. The most substantial revision, withthe help of Thomas Raysmith, has been made for this current version(2023), in covering many more philosophical traditions. Various peoplehave made comments and suggestions over the years, and trying to nameeveryone would inevitably miss many out. So we just record our thankshere: we have tried to respond appropriately in all cases. Forinstitutional support over the last six years, however, we wouldespecially like to thank the Institut für Philosophie at theHumboldt-Universität zu Berlin. As we seek to broaden the accountof analysis offered here, in seeking greater inclusivity to avoidEurocentrism, which cannot be done in a single revision, we inviteanyone who has further suggestions of what to cover or comments on thearticle itself to email us at the addresses given below.