By studying logic, your mind acquires self-reliance and independence. You become at home in abstractions and you can progress using ideas that are free from the coming and going of the moment. You develop an unsuspected power of assimilating in rational form all the complex branches of knowledge.
By studying logic you begin to grasp and retain the essential character of all the sciences stripping them of their external features and in this way extracting the logical element they hold in common. Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments. William H Newton-Smith, Logic
Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought. Edward Teller, The Pursuit of Simplicity
Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce ‘proofs’ of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors – Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm’s proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes – but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
What do you think science is? There’s nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic? Steven Novella
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Woody Allen
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’ program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens ‘at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign’. Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to ‘unwitting subjects in social situations’. At least one death, that of Dr Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers. Ted Kennedy, address to Senate 1977
The world we live in can seem pretty illogical ... Computer sciences tend to think that logic is the bees’ knees. Professor David Cliff, The Joy of Logic, BBC 2013
Aristotle: he created the first formal rules of logic. ibid.
1947: The Mathematical Analysis of Logic: George Bull ... Bull’s big idea was that logic was actually closer to Mathematics than Philosophy ... He called it his ‘calculus of reasoning’. ibid.
Turing’s universal machine is what we today call the computer. ibid.
If materialism is true, it seems to me that we cannot know that it is true. If my opinions are the result of the chemical processes going on in my brain, they are determined by the laws of chemistry, not those of logic. J B S Haldane
If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason for supposing that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. J B S Haldane, Possible Worlds, 1927
Science has taught us to think the unthinkable. Because when nature is the guide – rather than a priori prejudices, hopes, fears or desires – we are forced out of our comfort zone. One by one, pillars of classical logic have fallen by the wayside as science progressed in the 20th century, from Einstein’s realization that measurements of space and time were not absolute but observer-dependent, to quantum mechanics, which not only put fundamental limits on what we can empirically know but also demonstrated that elementary particles and the atoms they form are doing a million seemingly impossible things at once. Lawrence M Krauss
It would appear that the left logical hemisphere can be persuaded or manipulated into believing a certain belief or behaviour was logically correct. Once this is established in the mind of the individual, then it appears possible to carry out any form of atrocity under the cloak of it being justifiable. David Pederson, Cameral Analysis
Almost 2,500 years ago a philosopher was born here: his name was Socrates. And he’s come to symbolise one of philosophy’s most inspiring gifts to the rest of us. The idea that thinking logically about our lives might help us to be more certain of ourselves, more independent, less conformist, less hamstrung by what other people think. It’s the dream that philosophy can set us free. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Socrates on Self-Confidence, 2000
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. W B Yeats
Mr Spock, remind me to tell you that I’m sick and tired of your logic. Star Trek s1e16: The Galileo Seven, McCoy
You are one of my most valued officers. And you are my friend. It is vital that you understand me here. I need you. But I also need to know that I can count on you. You are my counsel. The one I turn to when I need my moral compass checked. We have forged this relationship for years. And I depend on it. I realise you made a sacrifice for me. But it’s not one I would have allowed you to make. You can use logic to justify absolutely anything. Star Trek: Voyager s1e10: Prime Factors, Janeway to Tuvok
Logic offers us a serenity humans seldom experience. Star Trek XI 2009 starring Chris Pine & Zachary Quinto & Eric Baba & Karl Urban & Simon Pegg & John Cho & Anton Yelchin & Zoe Saldana et al, director J J Abrams, Spock senior to Spock junior
Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority. Dr Who
Life replaced logic. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One of the world’s greatest unsung heroes – ‘Boole is the father of information technology’ … and he would do this against a backdrop of Ireland’s darkest days. The Genius of George Boole, RTE1 2015
Nearly two hundred years ago George Boole made a revolutionary discovery … Boole argued that almost every value or question could be reduced to either true or false. A simplification of our world as a basic statement. ibid.
He dedicates every breathing moment to mathematics and in particular to a branch of maths known as calculus. ibid.
And then Boole develops a new branch of mathematics – invariant theory. ibid.
To prove the existence of God … He seeks to prove this by applying to the Bible the process of logical analysis. ibid.
Boole publishes his masterpiece – The Laws of Thought. ibid.
But report after report came out which revealed that this inventive gaming of the system was now endemic throughout the public services. What was supposed to be a rational system was instead creating a strange world in which no-one knew whether to believe the numbers or not. Adam Curtis, The Trap II: The Lonely Robot, BBC 2007
A powerful system of control: but the numbers were also having a strange and perverse effect on New Labour’s vision of a freer and more open Britain. They were in fact creating a more rigid and stratified society. At the heart of this was education and league tables for schools. The tables showed parents which were the best performing schools and which were the worst ones. ibid.
Rich parents moved into the areas of the best schools which then caused house prices to spiral keeping the poor out. ibid.
What the psychiatrists had discovered was that an objective system based on numbers had led them into a trap: the numbers had imposed their own narrow logic on how we thought and felt about ourselves. ibid.
New Labour: they gave power away to the banks and the markets. And in the management of society New Labour turned to the mathematical systems that John Major had brought in but on a scale never seen before. They believed that people actually behaved in the way described by the simplified economic model. Performance targets and incentives would be set for everything and everyone. Even cabinet ministers would have to perfect their performance targets or be punished. ibid.
‘We want a barometer of the indicators of the quality of life.’ ibid. Prescott
What New Labour began to discover was that people were more complex and devious than the simple model allowed. ibid.
Hospital managers proved to be particularly devious. When they were set targets to cut waiting lists, they ordered consultants to do the easiest operations first, like bunions and vasectomies. Complicated ones like cancers were no longer prioritised. And they found other clever ways of getting people off the lists. ibid.
Recorded crime: again, inventive strategies were found. ibid.
But report after report came out which revealed that this inventive gaming of the system was now endemic throughout the public services. What was supposed to be a rational system was instead creating a strange world in which no-one knew whether to believe the numbers or not. ibid.
Under New Labour the country is even more unequal than it was under Mrs Thatcher with an ever increasing share of the wealth going to a tiny 1% of the top of society … The social divisions in Britain are hardening and deepening. ibid.
Financial and political corruption on a huge scale … Those who ran many of America’s corporations were faking profits on an enormous scale … Despite the growing evidence of corruption, the Clinton administration portrayed the boom as something revolutionary. It was a genuine democracy of the market place in which everyone at all levels of society was benefiting. But this was completely untrue. ibid.
In economics the whole idea of the free market as an efficient system is coming under serious attack. ibid.