|
Llull's idea was to analyze basic concepts by associating them one to
each other and see what happened. This, to him, was tantamount to
penetrating the inner workings of God and nature, and so to
understanding the world better (and giving an effective, objective
account of it). If faith (or even mystic revelation) was reached in
the process, then Llull's ultimate design purpose was accomplished,
that of founding faith on reason, and of justifying beliefs through
logical analysis. The originality here was that this was done in
practice by mechanically executing an iterated expansion of a given set
of initial beliefs (a core or "compendium" of truths) until, should
the case arrive, a contradiction obtained. By postulating such a
procedure Llull was in fact anticipating the modern (1955) idea
of semantic tableaux. (More of this later.)
|
|