Else Barth (1928–2015)

Excerpt

Else Margarete Barth, a Norwegian and Dutch philosopher and logician, was born in Strinda (now part of Trondheim) on August 3, 1928; she died in Groningen on January 6, 2015. Else Barth was an exceptionally forceful contributor to the development of argumentation theory in the Netherlands and beyond, both through her own contributions and by the way she inspired others to do research in this area and helped to build up a community of researchers. Logic she took very seriously as a potential instrument for understanding and improving our often sloppy or flawed ways of reasoning and arguing. However, for this potential to actualize, logical theorizing could not remain restricted to a priori investigations of logical systems but had to be pursued into a more dialectical, pragmatical, and empirical direction. Her research, which was more encompassing than just argumentation studies, contributed to this reorientation in various ways. …