It is often remarked in the typography community that you should only tell your enemies about kerning. Once primed with a richer appreciation for character-spacing (and thoroughly incapable of unlearning this lesson), a student is guaranteed to leave your company with a diminished enjoyment of the world. A deeper view for sure, but one that has been blemished by knowledge.
As Byron wrote in his Manfred: “But grief should be the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most, Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.“[1]
Or, if you prefer to be terse, ‘ignorance is bliss’.
But bliss is very rarely interesting, as Byron well knew. Most of his literary work is full of intelligent heros, burdened by societies norms and wearied by its stupidity.
This has become a very popular character template. Byron’s romantic protagonist is as popular as ever, perhaps due to the enduring presumption that intellectual and emotional attributes adhere to a zero-sum game.
Take Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek’s Mr Spock. Both men are considered paragons of logical reasoning, yet both are isolated individuals who fail to comprehend society.
Yet, ironically, these two characters summon nothing but contempt from the professional academics they are supposed to exemplify. For logicians and philosophers of logic, Spock and Holmes are intellectual travesties.
So, my trepidation for the readers’ spirits is somewhat overshadowed by a sense of duty to logic. And it is for this reason that I will now present some of the logical blunders of these fictional charlatans.
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We’ll start with Spock.
Consider this small yet characteristic dialogue between Mr Spock and another crew-member in the episode ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield‘:
Uhura: It doesn’t make any sense.
Spock: To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical.[2]
Firstly, I frequently dismay when people say ‘that doesn’t make sense’ when they mean to say, ‘I don’t think what you have said is true’. Yet, even this interpretation wouldn’t acquit Uhura who probably means, ‘I cannot explain how/why…,’ when speaking about the baffling racism of two aliens who have just discovered they are the last of their kind.
The dictionary definition doesn’t help much either:
make sense, to be reasonable or comprehensible: ‘His attitude doesn’t make sense.’[3]
Yet, in strict logical terminology, ‘sense’ has to do with a proposition’s ability to be true or false. To illustrate: ‘Tuesday is the day of the week after Monday‘ is true by definition of the terms. ‘Earth is the third planet from the Sun‘ is also true, this time as a matter of fact.
‘Biggest justice if galaxy ratio‘ is nonsense. The meaning and arrangement of the terms incapacitates the proposition from being either true or false.
Of course, you might dismiss all this as a quibble about the definition of words. Yet what concerns me is that this double-usage of ‘sense’ conflates the two very different ideas. The common usage is a matter of ignorance (an inability to understand), while the technical use is a logical matter (and inability to be understood).
However, I shouldn’t scorn Uhura who is, after all, speaking above her pay-grade as chief communications officer. It’s Spock who needs to answer for his crimes against logic.
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Here is a sample of Spock’s use of ‘logic’, presented in chronological order of air-date (not necessarily character chronology!).
In ‘The City on the Edge of Forever‘, Spock tries to comprehend his recent time travel to 1930s New York:
Spock: There is a theory. There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river, with currents, eddies, backwash.[4]
During an infestation of cute fluffy spheres, crew of the Enterprise quickly discovers ‘The Trouble With Tribbles‘ and attempts to remove them from the ship:
Capt. Kirk: How close will we come to the nearest Klingon outpost if we continue on our present course?
Chekov: Ah, one parsec, sir. Close enough to smell them.
[grins broadly]
Spock: That is illogical, Ensign. Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
Chekov: I was making a little joke, sir.
Spock: Extremely little, Ensign.[5]
In ‘A Piece Of The Action‘, Spock is confused by the actions of others:
Dr. McCoy: Well, Mr. Spock, they didn’t stay frightened very long, did they?
Spock: Most illogical reaction. We demonstrated out superior weapons. They should have fled.
Dr. McCoy: You mean they should have respected us?
Spock: Of course.
Dr. McCoy: Mr. Spock, respect is a rational process. Did it ever occur to you they might react emotionally, with anger?
Spock: Doctor, I’m not responsible for their unpredictability.[6]
In ‘The Day Of The Dove‘, Spock makes a more general comment about his situation.
Mr. Spock: May I say that I have not enjoyed serving under Humans. I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.[7]
In ‘That Which Survives‘ a sudden transportation accross a great distance leaves the crew-members pondering the astonishing event (note, also, the maddening use of ‘sense‘).
Rahda: It doesn’t make any sense, but somehow I’d say that in a flash we’ve been knocked 1000 lightyears away from where we were.
Mr. Spock: 990.7 lightyears to be exact, lieutenant.
Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott: But that’s not possible, nothing can do that.
Mr. Spock: Mr. Scott, since we are here, your statement is not only illogical, it is also unworthy of refutation.[8]
And in the recent 2009 film ‘Star Trek‘, Spock find himself speaking to a future-Spock, and reflecting on the destruction of his home planet.
Spock: In the face of extinction, it is only logical that I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race.[9]
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Surverying this small collection of quotations, we see that Spock presents ‘logic’ as being applicable to the following realms:
- Factual claims (observation or universal theory)
- Expectations (including guesses)
- Beliefs (which, we are told, can be partially logical)
- Emotions (of all kind)
- Actions and states of affairs
The first three of these confuses ‘logic’ with whether a statement is judged to be true or false.
Logic isn’t about isolated statements, but about how they are connected together.
A logical argument infers some conclusions from a list of premises in such a way that the intermediate steps are joined together by a set of rules (called ‘logical inferences’). If the rules have been correctly applied, the argument is ‘valid’; if not, it is ‘invalid’.
For example:
(premise) “All people are mortal.”
(premise) “All Greeks are people.”
(conclusion) “All Greeks are mortal.”
is a valid logical argument, albeit a very simple one. And it is worth adding that logically valid arguments do not necessairly guarantee the truth of the conclusions. The premises might be false, and can lead to false conclusions. However, it is a requirement of logic that the rules of inference guarantee true conclusions if provided with true premises.
Fourth on the list is what Spock is best known for: his struggle with emotions. Yet to deem emotions as ‘illogical’ is a gross mis-classification. Perhaps that’s the root cause of his problems!
Emotions are not statements, and cannot be part of a logical argument. Therefore, they have no capacity to be either logical or illogical. If you want to classify emotions, call them ‘non-logical’. So, to judge them with logical terms is an error in itself. Whether emotions should be suppressed or embraced is a separate question.
The last item of the list is also problematic. Spock frequently judges the happenings of the world in logical terms. Apparently, one can act logically or illogically.
However, the same analysis of emotions applies to actions. Actions are not statements, and so fall into the same category of ‘non-logical’.
We could also charge Karl Marx with a similar error, as he was of the opinion that logical judgements could be made about the world. For instance, Marxists are prone to such phrases as, ‘the dialectical contradictions in the material world’.
Why this is an odd thing to say is well expressed by the philosopher Lawrence Wilde:
Dialectical philosophers claim that contradictions exist in reality and that the most appropriate way to understand the movement of that reality is to study the development of those contradictions. Formal logic denies that contradictions exist in reality, and where they are seen to exist in thought, they have to be expunged in order to arrive at the truth. (…) On the face of it, therefore, the claims of dialectical and formal logic appear to be incommensurable, and dialogue between the two systems appears to be impossible.
(…)
According to the principle of non-contradiction, contradictions do not exist in reality but only in thought, and when they exist in thought they signify an error. Marx is clearly claiming that contradictions exist in capitalist reality… Do these dialectical contradictions entail a repudiation of formal logic?[10]
Despite the seemingly limitless number of Marxist interpretations, I have yet to find one that renders sense from the idea of physical contradictions.
I hope it is now clear that the writers of Spock’s character had a very poor understanding of logic. Obviously, the TV show is written so that the other characters consider Spock to be an expert in the subject. It is curious that most of the viewers seem to have been persuaded to agree with them!
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In the next part, i’ll consider Sherlock Holmes’ claim to be using ‘deduction’.
Reference
[1] Lord Byron (1816-1817) “Manfred“
[2] Some of the closing lines from ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield‘, Series 3 Episode 14 of ‘Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: January 10, 1969]
[3] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sense
[4] ‘The City on the Edge of Forever‘, Series 1 Episode 28 of ’Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: April 6, 1967]
[5] ‘The Trouble With Tribbles‘, Series 2 Episode 15 of ’Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: December 29, 1967]
[6] ‘A Piece Of The Action‘, Series 2 Episode 17 of ’Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: January 12, 1968]
[7] ’The Day of the Dove‘, Series 3 Episode 7 of ’Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: November 1, 1968]
[8] ‘That Which Survives‘, Series 3 Episode 17 of ’Star Trek’ [Original Airdate: January 24, 1969]
[9] ’Star Trek‘ [movie] (2009)
[10] Wilde, Lawrence (1991) ‘Logic: Dialectic and Contradiction‘ [Appears in: 'The Cambridge Companion to Marx', ed. Terrell Carver]
