My presentation will explore the great interest devoted by Chinese intellectuals to their tradition of 名辯學 (Study of the "Debate about Names") during the critical period of the demise of the Empire and the building of the Republic. For about fifty years, both the traditional and modern strands turned their attention to passages of the Book of Master Mo until then largely ignored, in order to assimilate the Western method of thought and argumentation. The first part will explain the background to the Chinese transmission of Logic, based on Yan Fu's 1905 translation of A System of Logic (John Stuart Mill) and Wang Guo Wei's 1931 translation of Principles of Science (William Jevons). The second part will describe the seminal efforts to reconstitute and reinterpret the 墨經、說 " Mozi Canons and the Canon Glosses" by scholars such as Sun Yirang, Liang Qichao e Zhang Taiyan. The third part will emphasize the breakthroughs since the 1920s, analyzing contributions in the fields of Philology as well as "Chinese Philosophy", which encompass Hu Shi's catalyzing role and Zhang Shizhao's work 邏輯指要 Fundaments of Logic (1946).