Comments on: The Failure of Modern Logicians http://logical-critical-thinking.com/logic/the-failure-of-modern-logicians/ Tue, 21 May 2013 15:31:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Loganhttp://logical-critical-thinking.com/logic/the-failure-of-modern-logicians/#comment-63 Logan Tue, 11 Sep 2012 02:38:00 +0000 http://logical-critical-thinking.com/?p=263#comment-63 Um, what the fuck? Are you talking about the father of mathematical logic, George Boole, who ran a school for impoverished women and contributed to a mathematical and scientific public library for the working class, and whose wife wrote a popular children’s book for teaching algebra through stories? Are you thinking about Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland but also The Game of Logic and other works trying to popularize logic in early childhood education? Or are you talking about Bertrand Russell, who was just about as socialist as you can get, ran an experimental school to test his educational theories, and wrote countless popular works on logic, social reform, economics, education, and just about every subject you can think of? Or are you thinking of Charles Peirce, who died in poverty after an incredibly full career, and after writing countless popular works to explain his logical theories to the general public, including contributions to such classics as the Penny ‘Cyclopedia? Are you thinking of Wittgenstein, who, well … was fucking Wittgenstein? Are you thinking of Norbert Weiner, who called on his fellow academics to withhold research which was being used for the exploitation of military targets? Are you thinking of Hillary Putnam, who has carried forth his family’s tradition of social activism and has organized demonstration after demonstration at Harvard consistently for decades?

Or are you thinking of the current world renowned logician, magician, musician, mathematician, and Taoist philosopher Raymond Smullyan? The man who invented the “knights and knaves” puzzles to help people understand the complexities of modern logic, ranging from his favored analytic tableaux methods to combinatory logic to Godel’s incompleteness theorems and the undecidability theorems of Church and Turing? Who wrote textbooks ranging from “A Puzzle Guide to Godel” and “Logical Labyrinths” to “Diagonalization and Self-Reference” and “Set Theory and the Continuum Problem”? Who wrote countless popular works like “What is the Name of this Book?”, “The Tao is Silent”, “The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes” and more?

I am utterly astounded at how you managed to pick a technical field with such a proud and abundant history of social activism and interaction with the public and single it out as somehow the worst offenders of elitism and obscurantism and the gravest traitors to the public trust. It would be one thing if these were obscure names, chosen from the backwaters of the field, but they have been its leaders! You sir, have literally no idea what you are talking about, and I am deeply troubled that you would burden some poor soul with the contents of a book containing this much ignorance of the purported subject.

]]> By: kylehttp://logical-critical-thinking.com/logic/the-failure-of-modern-logicians/#comment-13 kyle Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:55:52 +0000 http://logical-critical-thinking.com/?p=263#comment-13 I was reading the line about the “Inability of logicians to explain complex logic and critical thinking in a non technical way”, and I was thinking, “then why don’t you do something about it! I would love to have stepping stones made available to make logic accessible”

Then I read the last line. “I am currently working on a book that highlights these concerns as well as many others”

Kudos to you, sir.

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