About the ASL

Purpose of the Association

The Association for Symbolic Logic is an international organization that supports research and critical studies in logic. Its primary function is to provide an effective forum for the presentation, publication, and critical discussion of scholarly work in this area of inquiry.

Logic is an ancient discipline that has undergone striking modern developments through the introduction of rigorous formal methods, stimulated largely by foundational problems in mathematics. “Symbolic logic” is a term intended to encompass the entire field of logical inquiry, undertaken in this modern spirit.

The Association was founded in 1936, at a time when great advances in logic were beginning to be made. Its first members were mainly mathematicians and philosophers who perceived a common ground and sought to strengthen it. Recent research in other areas such as computer science, linguistics, and cognitive science has also been inspired by logic, and the current membership and activities of the Association reflect such expanding interests.

The Association aims to promote awareness of and appreciation for these advances among all who may benefit. Bringing together and serving persons with diverse backgrounds remains an important function of the Association. Although it has many different aspects and is growing rapidly, the field of logic is still coherent; it is the objective of the Association to present current research in logic to all logicians in such a way as to preserve the essential integrity of the entire subject and to promote interactions of all aspects of logic with each other.

To achieve these ends, the Association engages in a broad range of activities. It organizes and sponsors meetings and summer schools throughout the world; it publishes books and journals; it awards prizes for excellence in research and in expository writing; it maintains professional ties with related organizations; it maintains a website which provides information of interest to logicians; and it sends a quarterly Newsletter mailing with programs of ASL meetings and other information to its members.

Meetings

The Association holds two major annual meetings to present current research in all aspects of logic in a way that is accessible to all logicians. These meetings occasionally have been co-located with other meetings in areas of interest to logicians, such as computer science. The North American Annual Meeting is a 3-4 day event that is held in the spring on a university campus. The European Summer Meeting (Logic Colloquium), is often co-sponsored by various organizations. The Logic Colloquium may run for a week or more and frequently includes some form of summer school.

The Association also holds meetings annually in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association and the Joint Mathematics Meetings.

Meetings of the Association normally include one-hour addresses by invited speakers as well as briefer reports contributed by ASL members. Abstracts of these reports are published in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

The Association also regularly sponsors conferences around the world – sponsored meetings have taken place in all six regions. Reports of sponsored meetings are published in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

Proposals are welcome for special joint meetings with other societies having an interest in the ideas and uses of logic, as are proposals for other suitable projects that are consistent with the aims of the Association. Such proposals should be sent to the ASL Business Office at asl@uconn.edu or mailed to: Association for Symbolic Logic, Department of Mathematics, University of Connecticut, 341 Mansfield Road U-1009, Storrs, CT 06269-1009 USA.

Publications

The official journals of the Association are The Journal of Symbolic LogicThe Review of Symbolic Logic, and The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

ASL books are published in cooperation with Cambridge University Press. The Association’s book publishing program, initiated in 1999, includes the Lecture Notes in Logic. This series was published from 1993 to 1999 by Springer-Verlag under editorial control of the ASL. All books in this series are available from the Association, with discounts for members. The Association also has assumed editorial publishing responsibility for the book series Perspectives in Logic (formerly Perspectives in Mathematical Logic, Springer-Verlag).

The Association undertakes other publishing ventures such as being an active participant in the project to publish the collected works of Kurt Gödel (Oxford University Press).

All of these publications are available to individual members of the Association at a discount.