a. and sb. [ad. med.L. logisticus (whence F. logistique), ad. Gr. λογιστικός, f. λογίζεσθαι to reckon, reason, f. λόγος reckoning, account, reason: see LOGIC, LOGOS.]
A. adj.
† 1. ? Pertaining to reasoning; logical. Obs.
1628. Jackson, Creed, IX. vii. § 6. Even the wisest … writers oft-times swallow such fallacies in historical narrations … as would be rejected … were they exhibited to them in the simplicity of language or logistic form.
1644. Bulwer, Chirol., 5. Men that are borne deafe and dumbe; who can argue … rhetorically by signes, and with a kinde of mute and logistique eloquence overcome their amaz’d opponents.
2. Pertaining to reckoning or calculation.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Logist, one skill’d in the Logistick Science, i. e. the Art of Reckoning, or casting Account.
1732. Berkeley, Alciphr., II. 115. The Algebraic Mark, which denotes the Root of a negative Square, hath its Use in Logistic Operations.
3. Math. a. In logistic curve, line, spiral = logarithmic. Also = pertaining to a logarithmic curve, e.g., logistic semi-ordinate. b. Logistic logarithms: logarithms of sexagesimal numbers or fractions used in astronomical calculations. c. Logistic numbers (see quot. 1882).
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., Logistic, or Logarithmic line, a curve so called, from its properties and uses, in constructing and explaining the nature of logarithms. Ibid. There may be infinite logistic spirals. Ibid., s.v. Quadrature, The space intercepted between the two logistic semiordinates.
1785. Hutton (title), Mathematical Tables; Containing the Common, Hyperbolic, and Logistic Logarithms.
1834. Nat. Philos., Astron., xii. 226/1 (U. K. S.). The proportional, or, as they are sometimes called, logistic logarithms.
1882. J. W. L. Glaisher, in Encycl. Brit., XIV. 777/1. Logistic numbers is the old name for what would now be called ratios or fractions.
B. sb.
† 1. A calculator. Obs.
1633. W. Robinson, in Rigaud, Corr. Sci. Men (1841), I. 15. A more exact way … could not possibly be taken than by angles taken with a very large quadrant, and so good an artist and logistic as Snellius was.
2. Math. A logistic curve.
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., The logistic will never concur with the axis, except at an infinite distance. Ibid. Quadrature of the Logistic.
1773. Horsley, in Phil. Trans., LXIV. 245. The subtangent of the atmospherical logistic, is the length of a column of such a fluid as I have supposed.
3. pl. (rarely sing.). a. The art of arithmetical calculation; the elementary processes of calculation, as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. b. Logistical or sexagesimal arithmetic.
a. 1656. Blount, Glossogr., Logistick, the Art of counting or reckoning, the practice of Arithmetick, or that part thereof which contains Addition, Substraction, Multiplication and Division.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Logisticks, the same as Logistical Arithmetick; but some apply the Term to signify the first general Rules in Algebra.
1817. Colebrooke, Algebra, etc., 5. Paricarmáshtaca, eight operations, or modes of process: logistics or algorism.
1884. J. Gow, Hist. Gk. Math., iii. 65. [Plato] is on many occasions careful to distinguish the vulgar logistic from the philosophical arithmetic.
b. 1801. Encycl. Brit., Suppl. II. 81. Logistics, or Logistical Arithmetic, a name sometimes employed for the arithmetic of sexagesimal fractions, used in astronomical computations.
