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The Fight Between Logic And No Logic.

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Posted by Alexander on February 23, 2001 19:41:30 UTC

The answer on this discussion is on the surface: MATH.

This is a fear word for any humanitarian because in his junior high years he did not understand algebra. I know some even bright in arithmetics schoolboys who did not grasp letters and after high school had a dilemma: to struggle futher in hope that a miracle helps them to get into technical fields, or to give up and to be a philosopher (writer, linguist, historian, producer, etc.). Those who relied on miracles simply did not make it into or through technical colleges.

And in numerous discussion with humanitarians of various calibers I learned that they were so often offended by technical people pointing on huge gaps in their logic/education/philosophy that they became defensive and fight back by denying/diminishing value of logic and math by any possible mean.

Look, how much noise is everywhere each time scientists discover strange phenomenon. "Aha, say humanities - that is what I told them yesterday - the math does not work!" or "The Einstein was wrong! (again?!)" To only learn next day that it does (but not the way they thought - although they anyway do not know much math).

I personally am familiar with a great philosophy teacher (professor, member, author, etc.) who tried to prove to me that a Zenon paradox (rabbit chasing turtle: by the time the rabbit gets to the place where turtle was when they started, the turtle is a little ahead, then by the time the rabbit gets to that place, the turtle is again ahead and so on) has not been solved yet and thus allmighty powerfull science is completely paralysed here. And I could not convince him that sometimes infinite sum gives finite result (1/2+1/4+...). Yet he was teaching - guess, what? - astronomy! (At about the same time one astronomy PhD asked the dean to teach this class but was turned down. I guess, because the philosopher had greater "mastery to please the dean".)

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