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Newton da Costa

Newton da Costa was a Brazilian logician and mathematician who taught at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba and the University of São…

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Also known as Newton Carneiro Affonso da Costa

1929 – 2024 · Curitiba, São Paulo, Florianópolis (Brazil)

Traditions: Analytic

Newton da Costa was a Brazilian logician and mathematician who taught at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba and the University of São Paulo. In the early 1960s he constructed the first systematic hierarchy of paraconsistent logics, the C-systems, in which contradictions do not entail everything. He founded an influential Brazilian school of logic and later worked on the philosophy of science, including a theory of partial or quasi-truth.

Key ideas

  • A logic can tolerate some contradictions without collapsing into triviality, by rejecting the principle that a contradiction entails everything.
  • His C-systems form a hierarchy of increasingly weak paraconsistent calculi.
  • Inconsistent but non-trivial theories can be studied rigorously, including in set theory and mathematics.
  • Scientific theories may be quasi-true or partially true, which better fits how science handles incomplete information.

Major works

  • Sistemas formais inconsistentes (1963)
  • On the Theory of Inconsistent Formal Systems (1974)
  • Science and Partial Truth (2003, with Steven French)

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