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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 23, 2011
Logic & poetry
Logic - elementary, classical logic - is, like grammar, a potentially boring subject, and in the hands of the right teacher, it can be stupefying. (That "right teacher" being, usually, one who does not understand the subject himself.)It was once part of the curriculum in Ontario public schools (I am assured, though I have seen little evidence), and as I mentioned in passing in my column this week, it continues to be taught in some obscure, and wonderfully backward, Catholic private schools (including at least one in the Ottawa area). It is like grammar - which is still taught, a little more widely - in the sense that it can also be learned through example and something like osmosis, by people who will never master the jargon. Some people just seem to have logical minds, or a settled dispropensity to nonsense, from whatever cause. They tend to be thoughtful, slowmoving people, and they are much blessed. The rest of us, mostly, think too fast. But some mastery of the jargon of logic can quicken; and practice can put everyone on his guard. I was delighted to learn, after my Wednesday column, that students in that Ottawa-area school were actually given a homework assignment, to search through newspapers for examples of "petitio principii." Would that we writers also did this. (Petitio principii is the most direct form of circular reasoning, in which the conclusion has already been assumed in the premise. It is also called "begging the question," dangerously, because most people think that means avoiding the question, which is something else entirely.) A practical purpose, in spreading knowledge of logic among the people at large, would be to defeat political nonsense. To my sight, the Left relies entirely, and the Right quite largely, on little slogans that anyone could see through, if he thought about them for a minute. Logic provides a way to cut through Pavlovian responses from the party rank-and-file. It is a means to make people think for themselves, instead of marching to demented drummers. My own constant complaint about the "reasoning" of the Left, about the world view of "progressive" factions, begins in logical irritation. For it is all founded upon a giant "petitio principii." It starts from the premise that "progress" (sometimes called "change") is both inevitable, and a good thing. It concludes that progress is inevitable, and a good thing. Anyone who resists the latest crank proposal, for extending the tyranny of Nanny State, is "behind the times." Therefore no need to argue on the merits. Of course, the reverse would also be tautological. But it is relatively rare; and where it appears it tends to be more honest. "All change is for the worse, including change for the better," as Frederick William Faber used to say (in the 19th century). But then, Father Faber wasn't under the impression he was making a logical deduction. He was, among other things (which included indulging a self-deprecating humour), confuting the prevailing "progressivism" of his own age. For its premise had to be: "All change is for the better, including change for the worse." Moreover, his statement was consciously poetic. And I think two things are missing from contemporary discourse; two things that, in a broad view, are mutually dependent. One, in a sense, builds upon the other. Logic is missing, from most public speech, but also, poetry is missing. And for the same reason: that it is no longer taught. For the range of assertions that require logic is, though crucially important, also very narrow. We need a means, in speech, to go beyond logic, into kinds of analogy and vision expressing larger truths. Our contemporary idea of poetry, and poetic statement, is undisciplined slush. It is something "pretty" perhaps, something added on to plain prose statement; something which could, in principle, be lopped off again with no loss to meaning. Yet, the more profoundly a statement is true, the more it will have some poetic quality (which of course is not merely a question of scansion). Take the poetry away, and it becomes not only ugly, but false. (One sees this immediately in over-literal translations.) To write "poetically" is quite the opposite to slapping words together cutely, for the point of it is to get beyond the words; to "ensoul" them; to make something living. It is to discover, in man and in nature, dimensions of reality that dig beneath surface appearance; and to embody such truth. It is to find, beyond even logic, and through such agencies as love, that our world is in its nature poetic, and only seems prosaic when we cease to explore. The attempt to speak the truth, more fully, results in poetical constructions. Children raised without logic are prey to every kind of blather that blows by, and will be used by demagogues as voting fodder. But those also raised without poetry grow in an ignorance more profound. With logic we may test propositions mechanically, and should. But there is also a grammar of being, even a "grammar of assent" - a poetry - that reaches into the heart of reality. And those who eschew it have not begun to live. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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