Irving Copi


Irving Marmer Copi was an American philosopher, logician, and university textbook author.

Biography

Copi studied under Bertrand Russell while at the University of Chicago. In 1948 he contributed to the calculus of relations with his article using logical matrices.
Copi taught at the University of Illinois, the United States Air Force Academy, Princeton University, and the Georgetown University Logic Institute, before teaching logic at the University of Michigan, 1958–69, and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1969–90.
Assigned to teach logic, Copi reviewed textbooks available and decided to write his own. The manuscript was split into Introduction to Logic and Symbolic Logic. A reviewer noted that it had an "unusually comprehensive chapter on definition" and "The author accounts for the seductive nature of informal fallacies." The textbooks proved popular, and reviewer of the third edition noted over 100 new exercises added. Both textbooks are widely used, with the former currently in its 14th edition.
In 1941 Copi married Amelia Glaser. They had four children David, Thomas, William, and Margaret.

Books