October 19, 2018 Friday
Bedtime Story
Francis Bacon - a Critique of Syllogism
Bacon named his book Novum Organum
Scientiarum after Aristotle’s Organon which is a collection of six books on
logic.
This is something akin to the ‘Principia
phenomenon’ – a term coined by yours truly – where after Newton’s phenomenal
and revolutionary three-volume treatise ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica’ of 1687, several authors chose to use this name for their own
books including Bertrand Russell and Andrew Whitehead who also laid down
foundations of mathematics in three-volumes (1910, 1912 and 1913) and did not
hesitate to title it ‘Principia Mathematica’.
The fourth book of Aristotle’s Organon
collection is titled ‘The Posterior Analytics’ and deals with the concepts of
demonstration, definition and scientific knowledge.
This collection formed an integral part of
curriculum of the school that Aristotle had founded around 350 BC or so.
His ideas and work based on Organon would
have powerful influence on the coming civilizations including the Western Roman
Empire, Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire.
Later Arabs would translate this work into
Arabic and both Islamic and Jewish scholars would intensely study the work.
Francis Bacon was one among the many who
revived an interest in the study of logic during the Enlightenment based on
Aristotelian logic.
Bacon was at Cambridge for some time where
he had first met Queen Elizabeth who was quite impressed by his precocious
intellect and often referred to him as “The young lord keeper”.
As a young man in university he came across
how science was then being practiced first hand and was deeply disappointed by
it.
He felt that science as then practiced was
completely erroneous replete with biases; He even had the audacity to question
Aristotelian philosophy.
Bacon’s treatise ‘Novum Organum Scientiarum’
consisted of two volumes of aphorisms.
Aphorisms are a type of statements that
have these following twin properties:
One, they are pithy or laconic, the word
laconic coming from the ancient Greek region Laconia that was inhabited and
ruled by Spartans.
Spartans were known for their pithy of
speech.
Second, an aphorism is a statement that
will convey not some description or an event or some activity but specifically
an idea, or concept or thought.
An example of an aphorism would be: “The
visible Universe is finite”.
Francis Bacon began his first book with
full frontal attack on syllogism as a logical means of arriving at the truth.
Syllogism though logically sound is based
on two or more propositions that are assumed to be true which is where its
Achilles’ heel lies.
We shall discuss syllogism a little bit in the
nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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