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Foundations of Western Logic
Logic, as any clear-thinking person will tell you, is
essential to clear thinking. With the
use of logic, you can get to the bottom of just about any thorny problem that
may present itself to you in the course of a day, or until 5:00 p.m. when logic
goes off its shift and says hello to illogic, who arrives on the scene with a
fifth of gin, tonic water and a can of honey-roasted peanuts.
How do you know when you’re being logical? Simple.
You begin to speak in “syllogisms”, or arguments involving a major
premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion which follows ineluctably from them. Here’s an example:
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Pick up dry cleaning and cat litter.
No, wait. That’s
my “to-do” list. Let me try again.
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Socrates is cat litter.
That’s better.
The
principal brick in the foundation of Western logic is the “Principle of
Contradiction.” The way it works is
that you can’t say “A is B” and “A is not B” at the same time—not even if
you’re a ventriloquist. You can only
say one thing at a time.
The
main function of the Principle of Contradiction is to make women cry. If, in the heat of an argument, you say to a
woman “You ask me to pick a restaurant, but if I do, you tell me the one I pick
is out of the question. You’re always contradicting yourself!”
There
follows an emotional scene in which the woman begins to sob, then tells the man
he’s a big, stupid logical bully. The
man says he’s sorry, abandons logic and agrees to go to the woman’s sentimental
favorite. Which is where they were
going to end up anyway.
With
the advent of “modernism” came a retreat from the realm of logic in favor of
the illogical. The watershed point at
which human thought ended its long, arduous climb into the sunlight atop the
mountain of pure reason and began its slow descent into the swamp of unreason,
can be traced to a night on which Antonin Artaud, an important figure in the
Theatre of the Absurd, slapped a fifty-franc piece down on the bar of Les
Deux Maggots and jammed his beret down on his head.
“You
leaving?” Tristin Tzara asked.
“Yeah,
I’ve had enough. My parrot is your
sister’s armpit, though.”
Once you understand
syllogisms, you begin to see them everywhere.
After a while, it will seem like you can’t swing a dead cat without
hitting a logical conclusion. I know, I
tried it. I had to stop—it wasn’t fair
to the cat.
Take,
for example, the term “bohemian”. Did
you know it is based on a syllogism whose major and minor premises are
commonly-held beliefs, as follows:
1. All artists are gypsies.
2. All gypsies are from Bohemia.
3. All artists are Socrates.
You can’t argue with logic like that.