WHAT IS “ARGUMENT”?
The origin and proper value of the word “Argument” has been thus explained by the Rev. Dr. Donaldson, in a paper read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society:
The author first investigated the etymology and meaning of the Latin verb arguo, and its participle argutus. He showed that arguo was a corruption of argruo = ad gruo; that gruo (in argruo, ingruo, congruo) ought to be compared with κρούω, which means “to dash one thing against another,” especially for the purpose of making a shrill, ringing noise; that arguo means “to knock something for the purpose of making it ring, or testing its soundness,” hence “to test, examine, and prove any thing;” and that argutus signifies “made to ring,” hence “making a distinct, shrill noise,” or “tested and put to the proof.” Accordingly argumentum means id quod arguit, “that which makes a substance ring, which sounds, examines, tests, and proves it.”
It was then shown that these meanings were not only borne out by the classical usage of the word, but also by the technical application of “argument” as a logical term. For it is not equivalent to “argumentation,” or the process of reasoning; it does not even denote a complete syllogism; though Dr. Whately and some other writers on logic had fallen into this vague use of the word, and though it was so understood in the disputations of the Cambridge schools. The proper use of the word “argument” in logic is to denote “the middle term,” i. e. “the term used for proof.” In a sense similar to this the word is employed by mathematicians; and there can be no doubt that the oldest and best logicians confine the word to this, which is still its most common signification.
The author shows, by a collection of examples from the best English poets, that the established meanings of the word “argument” are reducible to three: (1) a proof, or means of proving; (2) a process of reasoning, or controversy, made up of such proofs; (3) the subject-matter of any discourse, writing, or picture. He maintains that the second of these meanings should be excluded from scientific language.
By this we are reminded of Swift’s dictum, of much wider application—that “Argument, as generally managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.”