Logic
Logic does not live up to its reputation, compared to Science. Logic is thinking about it. Science is observing it.Which are you going to believe if they contradict? Seeing is believing.
When you use logic, five things can happen and four of them are bad ...
You have incorrect premises and your conclusion is wrong.
Your premises are incomplete and your conclusion is wrong.
You have irrelevant premises that work into your logic and your conclusion is wrong.
Your logic is faulty and incorrect, so your conclusion is wrong.
Or ...
You have a complete set of correct premises uncontaminated by irrelevant ones and you apply perfect logic and arrive at the correct conclusion.
Actually, there is a fifth thing that can happen. You can have incorrect, incomplete, and irrelevant premises with faulty logic and yet still arrive at the correct conclusion. This happens all of the time, because the conclusion was observed in fact and the logic to explain it was constructed afterwards, using whatever premises are conveniently at hand. That is, the conclusion was observed (science) and the logic constructed as an afterthought.
This last sort of thing seems to confirm the logic process as a good method in people's minds, since it so often gives correct conclusions. This is where the reputation of logic as a good method comes from. Then people apply the convenient premises and more faulty logic to arrive at other conclusions, in which they place great faith, since it apparently worked so well before.
Science is based on data, observed facts. It is not based on logic. If it was based on logic, we would have figured everything out already by thinking about it, and there would be no point to collecting data, observing things, and performing experiments. As Einstein said, you only need one observed fact to overthrow a logical theory.
posted by X-Bar @ 2:01 PM
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