Relation implication and universal quantifier ; Reductio ad absurdum

Wikipedia; Formal logic

"There is a big difference between the kinds of formulas seen in traditional term logic and the predicate calculus that is the fundamental advance of modern logic. The formula A(P,Q) (all Ps are Qs) of traditional logic corresponds to the more complex formula ∀xPxQx in predicate logic, involving the logical connectives for universal quantification and implication rather than just the predicate letter A and using variable arguments Px where traditional logic uses just the term letter P. With the complexity comes power, and the advent of the predicate calculus inaugurated revolutionary growth of the subject.

Inference is not to be confused with implication. An implication is a sentence of the form 'If p then q', and can be true or false.  The Stoic logician Philo of Megara was the first to define the truth conditions of such an implication: false only when the antecedent p is true and the consequent q is false, in all other cases true. An inference, on the other hand, consists of two separately asserted propositions of the form 'p therefore q'. An inference is not true or false, but valid or invalid. However, there is a connection between implication and inference, as follows: if the implication 'if p then q' is true, the inference 'p therefore q' is valid. This was given an apparently paradoxical formulation by Philo, who said that the implication 'if it is day, it is night' is true only at night, so the inference 'it is day, therefore it is night' is valid in the night, but not in the day.

The theory of inference (or 'consequences') was systematically developed in medieval times by logicians such as William of Ockhamand Walter Burley. It is uniquely medieval, though it has its origins in Aristotle's Topics and Boethius' De Syllogismis hypotheticis. This is why many terms in logic are Latin. For example, the rule that licenses the move from the implication 'if p then q' plus the assertion of its antecedent p, to the assertion of the consequent q is known as modus ponens(or 'mode of positing'). Its Latin formulation is 'Posito antecedente ponitur consequens'. The Latin formulations of many other rules such as 'ex falso quodlibet' (anything follows from a falsehood), 'reductio ad absurdum' (disproof by showing the consequence is absurd) also date from this period."