Mid-Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Honey Extraction Moon<\/p>\n
“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein<\/p>\n
Logic revealed itself to me in Symbolic Logic I at Wabash College.\u00a0 Professor Larry Hackstaffe taught it and I struggled like a flopping fish for six weeks, right up to the first test.\u00a0 I studied and studied, but it made no sense to me.\u00a0 On the day of the first test I went in and Bam, it was there.\u00a0 Locked into place and flowing.<\/p>\n
This anecdote shows a strange reality about logic.\u00a0 You have to learn how to use it and when you do the learning curve is not necessarily progressive, moving from one logical step to another, rather it proceeds in the manner of insight and intuition.\u00a0 After you get, logic will get you from A to Z and show you how you got there.\u00a0 You can also show others how you got there.\u00a0 You can use it suss out weaknesses in the arguments of others and in your own arguments.<\/p>\n
Here’s the rub, though.\u00a0 Beginnings.\u00a0 Assumptions.\u00a0 What do you assume when you begin your logical journey?\u00a0 If we accept the two ideas of mortality and Socrates, we can use the famous syllogism, if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.\u00a0 If, however, we believe in, say, reincarnation, then this syllogism cannot make sense.\u00a0 Or, to take a more current example, if the debt ceiling is not a critical political issue to you, then all the arguments in the world about how to control it will be nonsense.<\/p>\n
Logic has a power in its crisp, repeatable steps and its ability to say whether one thing truly follows from another, but it has only limited use in the realm of the good, the true and the beautiful.\u00a0 Truth, even.\u00a0 Yes, truth lies outside logic’s realm.\u00a0 Logical can tell whether you a conclusion follows from its argument, but it cannot tell you whether it is a good conclusion or a bad conclusion.\u00a0 That is the realm of value.<\/p>\n
Imagination allows us, encourages us, to consider conclusions not dreamt of in your philosophy.\u00a0 Or mine.\u00a0 Imagination allows to go all non-Euclidean on geometry.\u00a0 It pushed past Newton and into General and Special relativity.\u00a0 Imagination flows into realms never conceived and into ideas never before entertained.\u00a0 Our imagination may be the most wondrous organ of all.\u00a0 The imaginal lobe, wherever it resides, dreams and schemes, rearranges and redesigns with no necessary allegiance to fact, truth, goodness or badness.<\/p>\n
Imagination is dangerous, yes, but also beautiful.\u00a0 I’m with Einstein, I want to go every where.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mid-Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Honey Extraction Moon “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein Logic revealed itself to me in Symbolic Logic I at Wabash College.\u00a0 Professor Larry Hackstaffe taught it and I struggled like a flopping fish for six weeks, right up to the first test.\u00a0 I … Continue reading Imagination<\/span>