Logic must be, even if it is not there.
Ironically, my class after English 203 is always my logic class, so the discussions that followed from Percival Everett’s Logic made me think of how I’ve learned to think of certain things due to the class. For example, a basic syllogism would be “Some dogs have tails, all dogs are mammals, therefore some mammals have tails.” I have always thought of logic as a basis of thought, that was not always applicable to everything in this world. “Constituent parts compose this reality-molecules, atoms, simple X”. I have always believed that the world we know, as well as what we do not know that simply exists, builds our reality. But it is what we do not know, and may never know, that interests me.
The letter “X”. From math to logic, it is one of the most popular letter for an undefined variable, an unknown. This particular part of the poem made me think of the fact that some things that exists, are not applicable to logic or vice versa. There is the X, that exists in everything and anything logic tries to prove or disprove. When one really thinks about it, logic is illogical. It leaves us with more and more questions, continuously delving into an “X” that leads to more unknowns and at some point, there is nothing left we can logically do. There is just “X”.
Some may find this endless cycle of logic to be interesting, but it came up in conversation in our group that Everett might actually mocking the continuous need to apply logic to everything. “Does my memory of you consists in parts? Simple component parts?”. Reading this, questioning it myself, I wonder if we should apply the thought of logic to human beings. We are complex, consisting of parts perhaps we ourselves can never fully know or understand. And do we really need to? Must we be able to break a person’s individual complexity down to an array of simple parts, or can we not not accept them. Is there a reason to logically delve into a person so deeply, and if so, will we not just arrive at “X”? The emotions about us we cannot explain, such as happiness or pain. The things about us that simply are.
Therefore, I end with this thought on logic as a whole. We learn how to logically assess certain aspects of what exists in this world, meaning logic is and always will be, even if it is not necessary or applicable to everything. Even if it will only lead to “X”, and that is okay. Because it is these variables, these unknowns, these endless string of questions with new ideas and “X’s” that arise that drive us forward to learn.