This volume is written jointly by Witold Marciszewski, who contributed the introductory and the three subsequent chapters, and Roman Murawski who is the author of the next ones - those concerned with the 19th century and the modern inquiries into formalization, algebraization and mechanization of reasonings. Besides the authors there are other persons, as well as institutions, to whom the book owes its coming into being.The study which resulted in this volume was carried out in the Historical Section of the research project Logical Systems and Algorithms for Automatic Testing of Reasoning,1986-1990, in which participated nine Polish universities; the project was coordinated by the Department of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the Bia'l'ystok Branch of the University of Warsaw, and supported by the Ministry of Education (some of its results are reported in (Srzednicki (Ed.) 1987). The major part of the project was focussed on the software for computer-aided theorem proving called Mizar MSE (Multi-Sorted first-order logic with Equality, reported in (Marciszewski 1994a)) due to Dr. Andrzej Trybulec. He and other colleagues deserve a grateful mention for a hands-on experience and theoretical stimulants owed to their collaboration.