Sotirov: Nascence of Logic

A Logical Show

Nascence of Logic

Salve keen reader!
Welcome!

You will not find here a detailed exposition of the nature of Logic. This Web-page is quite inappropriate to be a textbook. It is rather a show because will represent the artistic view on Logic as it has been appearing in the imagination of writers and painters for 4000 years. Of course, the collection of examples is quite incomplete and therefore chaotic. Most of the illustrations have been taken from other Web-sites and I hope their owners will appreciate my punctual references as an expression of recognition and extreme gratitude. I will be grateful also to everyone who would help me in finding new amazing illustrations as well as in sending better photos.

This Web-site has only educational and absolutely non-profit purposes.

Enjoy Logic!

* * *

Almost all textbooks of logic have been beginning with one and the same logical reasoning for 1000 years. It is:

Man is mortal;
Socrates is a man,
hence Socrates is mortal.

As we know, the conclusion about the mortality of Socrates is an historical truth having been empirically approved, but why should it be a logical truth? Our Puss has every reason to think in the following manner:

Man is mortal, indeed;
but I am not a man,
hence I am immortal,
ha-ha!

The main calling of logic is to motivate why we are logically right but Puss is logically wrong.

To convince ourselves that the question is not trivial, let's read the "logical" dialogues of both heroes of Eugène Ionesco's Rhinocéros (1959, in the language of the original):

LE LOGICIEN (au Vieux Monsieur) :
Je vais vous expliquer le syllogisme.
LE VIEUX MONSIEUR :
Ah! oui, le syllogisme!
[...]
LE LOGICIEN :
Le syllogisme comprend la proposition principale, la secondaire et la conclusion.
LE VIEUX MONSIEUR :
Quelle conclusion?
[...]
LE LOGICIEN :
Voici donc un syllogisme exemplaire. Le chat a quatre pattes. Isidore et Fricot ont chacun quatre pattes. Donc Isidore et Fricot sont chats.
LE VIEUX MONSIEUR :
Mon chien a aussi quatre pattes.
LE LOGICIEN :
Alors, c'est un chat.
LE VIEUX MONSIEUR (au Logicien, après avoir longuement réfléchi) :
Donc, logiquement, mon chien serait un chat.
LE LOGICIEN :
Logiquement, oui. Mais le contraire est aussi vrai.
[...]
LE LOGICIEN :
Autre syllogisme : tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat.
LE VIEUX MONSIEUR :
Et il a quatre pattes. C'est vrai, j'ai un chat qui s'appelle Socrate.
LE LOGICIEN :
Vous voyez...

How do you like the lesson of my colleague the Logician? His explanations appear to be natural and correct but have the only defect that they are not! One might object with reason that the dialogues had been cited from the theatre of the absurd. However, who could swear not to have heard such dialogues in the everyday life?

Absurd? Sure! But the absurd is obviously a peculiarity of our consciousness and Tertullian was only the first to formulate the principle Credo quia absurdum: sometimes we know something is absurd but we believe it. Maybe irrationality is our ultima ratio in the battle against the ineluctable? Dramatic considerations of a death-sick facing the end were depicted by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in his novel The Death of Ivan Ilych (1896, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude):

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.
[...]
"Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible."
Such was his feeling.

All forms of logical (or illogical) reasoning cited above are special kinds of inferences which have been thoroughly studied for the first time by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) in his Organon. In comparison with all pseudo-authentic Aristotle's busts, his portrait painted by Rembrandt van Rijn (1653, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) did not pretend to present the factual truth. The ideological truth was more important for him.

This excellent reproduction together with the commentary and the magnifier are borrowed from the Web-site of E. Kren and D. Marx. Their site contains many other pictures. If the magnifier is unusable on some reasons (e.g., JavaScript disabled), nevertheless you will see the picture with enough details. Just click!

The canvas is entitled Aristotle contemplating a bust of Homer. In a curious way it has gathered not only two but four great men. One of them is of course the artist himself. The presence of the fourth person is not so evident: Aristotle's celebrated pupil Alexander the Great is depicted on the medallion hanging from the splendid chain. The brooding mystery in philosopher's face together with the eloquence of his elegant fingers rested on the head of the blind poet bear an impression of a biblical wisdom and, at the same time, of a concernment about the problems of contemporaneity emphasized in the robes of a Renaissance humanist.

A Logical Show