“There were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer.”

— Genevieve Cogman

Source: The Burning Page (2016), Chapter 6 (pp. 64-65)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 16, 2021. History

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Genevieve Cogman 21

novelist and game designer 1972

Spike Hawkins (1943) British writer

Pig poetry http://www.porkopolis.org/lib/poetry/hawkins-s.htm

“It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of ' the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as if statements could, in respect of their formal powers, be grouped in mutually exclusive classes, like animals at a zoo in respect of their species. But to say that a statement is of some one logical form is simply to point to a certain general class of, e. g., valid inferences, in which the statement can play a certain role. It is not to exclude the possibility of there being other general classes of valid inferences in which the statement can play a certain role.”

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Source: Introduction to Logical Theory (1952), p. 53 as cited in: Ian Hacking (1975) Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 83.

“There are only two possible statements that can be made about the worlds," the Black Pope of the Carlist Hills had lectured one day. "Alpha: There is a God. Omega: there is not a God. To adhere to either of these two statements strongly is to be logical at least. Not to do so is to be in the snivelling wasteland between and to have no point of contact with logic or reason.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 5 : Muerte De Boscaje

“There were a lot of holes in that logic that he carefully avoided thinking about.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Cibola Burn (2014), Chapter 39 (p. 400)

“A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction
Context: A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form. In the eyes of the upholders of inductive logic, a principle of induction is of supreme importance for scientific method: "… this principle", says Reichenbach, "determines the truth of scientific theories. To eliminate it from science would mean nothing less than to deprive science of the power to decide the truth or falsity of its theories. Without it, clearly, science would no longer have the right to distinguish its theories from the fanciful and arbitrary creations of the poet's mind."
Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. Indeed, if there were such a thing as a purely logical principle of induction, there would be no problem of induction; for in this case, all inductive inferences would have to be regarded as purely logical or tautological transformations, just like inferences in inductive logic. Thus the principle of induction must be a synthetic statement; that is, a statement whose negation is not self-contradictory but logically possible. So the question arises why such a principle should be accepted at all, and how we can justify its acceptance on rational grounds.

“We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.'”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

There was no satisfactory answer.
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“If we had a starship, we could move near a black hole, stay there for a half hour and then come out. Outside hundreds of years could have gone. So we could... come away from the black hole into the far future easily.”

Carlo Rovelli (1956) Italian physicist

Carlo Rovelli: The nature of time (Apr 10, 2020)

“Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Source: The Tao of Physics (1975), Ch. 3, Beyond Language, p. 46.

“A large part of mathematics which becomes useful developed with absolutely no desire to be useful, and in a situation where nobody could possibly know in what area it would become useful; and there were no general indications that it ever would be so.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

"The Role of Mathematics in the Sciences and in Society" (1954) an address to Princeton alumni, published in John von Neumann : Collected Works (1963) edited by A. H. Taub ; also quoted in Out of the Mouths of Mathematicians : A Quotation Book for Philomaths (1993) by R. Schmalz
Context: A large part of mathematics which becomes useful developed with absolutely no desire to be useful, and in a situation where nobody could possibly know in what area it would become useful; and there were no general indications that it ever would be so. By and large it is uniformly true in mathematics that there is a time lapse between a mathematical discovery and the moment when it is useful; and that this lapse of time can be anything from 30 to 100 years, in some cases even more; and that the whole system seems to function without any direction, without any reference to usefulness, and without any desire to do things which are useful.

“We are told … statements that are not mathematical or logical formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true, but they only look like that. They cannot really be either necessary or certain.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“There were so many possible logical holes in that statement that Irene could have used it as a tea-strainer.”

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Genevieve Cogman 21

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