The Logic of Alice
The Logic of Alice: Clear Thinking in Wonderland, by Bernard M. Patten (Prometheus 2009)
A man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe . . . is a man with a loose screw in his understanding. or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith.
The Moonstone
Besides being near contemporaries, what does Betteredge in the Moonstone have in common with Alice and her adventures in Wonderland (Why is raven like a writing desk?)? All in good time.
I grew up not with the book by Lewis Carroll, but the Disney cartoon. I suppose my youngest child will grow up on the live action version. Still even then, I knew many episodes quite well and was easily convinced as an undergraduate that Alice’s adventures, far from being examples of nonsense were indeed filled with logical arguments and fallacies. (at this point I should hasten to add that I did eventually read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for myself, and yes it is a logician’s paradise). So then, imagine my delight at coming across a book that was reputed to outline all subtlety of reasoned argument in the mist of utter confusion.
Now imagine my utter disappointment. The Logic of Alice is a sprawling work that says more about its author than about clear thinking itself. We get his opinions of religion, politics, science, sex, child-rearing, ethics and a host of other topics. Yes logic and sound reasoning pervade, but often Alice’s encounters seem to be more of a launch-pad for what Patten deems to be clear thinking than the problems that actually confront Alice.
Here Patten is very much like Betteredge. In the Moonstone, Betteredge has an incredible knack for pulling random passages from Robinson Crusoe to shed light on murder, human nature, and the vicissitudes of life. While hardly random (Patten treats each chapter of Alice’s Adventure in turn and in proper order) one receives the distinct impression that he could invoke Carroll’s book to illustrate any opinion he would which to hold forth on.
This does make for some problems from the very beginning. Before Alice has her adventures, she is sitting bored and tired. Glancing briefly at her sister’s book she wonders of what use it might be since it contains neither pictures nor conversations. Patten accuses Alice of over generalizing–and then proceeds to discuss at length the dangers of such practices. But has Alice really over-generalized? Language is, as Patten often notes, a flexible and somewhat inaccurate device at times. At best one can argue that Alice does understand what people see in books without conversations or illustrations, not that Alice believes they are of no utility whatsoever. One could hardly go off on such a limited conclusion, however.
Worse, Patton makes errors in logic.
For instance, to illustrate the fallacy of the four-term syllogism, Patten presents the following:
- All men are rational
- Women are not men
- Therefore, women are not rational
Now, while it is obvious that the argument equivocates in its use of “men,” and so is invalid, the middle terms are not properly distributed for this particular form of syllogism (for those who have taken logic, you may recognize this as AEE, rather AII, which is the mood Patton seems to be assuming). To see this, look a the following, which is in the same mood and does not equivocate with the middle term.
- All Blue Jays are birds
- Robins are not Blue Jays
- Therefore Robins are not birds
At times Patton seems to miss the thrust of the arguments that Carroll’s characters are making. For instance, Patton argues that the Cheshire Cat is using circular reasoning. The argument would go something like this:
- Everyone is mad here. I’m mad, you (Alice) are mad . . .
- But I’m not mad (says Alice)
- But you (Alice) must be, since you are here.
However, one could easily read the Cheshire Cat as arguing,
- Everyone I’ve met here, whether they are mad or not are in fact mad
- You (Alice) are here
- Therefore you (Alice) are [probably] mad.
If one looks about, it is not too hard to find more such short comings. Even so, The Logic of Alice is not without its interesting bits. When he gets to actually examining Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Patten can be quite illuminating. For starters, he eschews some of the more fantastical interpretations (he has great fun with the pool of tears somehow being amniotic fluid). There are also some interesting and fairly straight-foreword interpretation of some of the characters. For instance, according to Patten, Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) stuttered and was known as Dodo, and so perhaps Carroll inserted himself into his own story.
These nuggets, however, are simply too few. And mores the pity, because Patten obviously had much more to say about Alice if he had gone down his own particular rabbit hole.
Recent Acquisitions: Juvenile and Young Adult Collection
Juvenile and Young Adult materials now available on the New Books shelf!
Junie B. Jones and a little monkey business / by Barbara Park ; illustrated by Denise Brunkus.
New York : Random House, c1993.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.P2197 Jt 1993
Junie B. Jones and her big fat mouth / by Barbara Park ; illustrated by Denise Brunkus.
New York : Random House, c1993.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.P2197 Jtr 1993
Junie B. Jones and some sneaky peeky spying / by Barbara Park ; illustrated by Denise Brunkus.
New York : Random House, c1994.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.P2197 Jts 1994
Junie B. Jones and the stupid smelly bus / by Barbara Park ; illustrated by Denise Brunkus.
New York : Random House, c1992.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.P2197 Ju 1992
Boxcar children / by Gertrude Chandler Warner ; illustrated by L. Kate Deal.
Niles, Ill. : Albert Whitman & Co., c1977.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.W244 Bo 1977
Mystery ranch / by Gertrude Chandler Warner ; illustrated by Dirk Gringhuis.
Niles, Ill. : Albert Whitman & Co., c1986.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.W244 My 1986
Surprise Island / by Gertrude Chandler Warner ; illustrated by Mary Gehr.
Niles, Ill. : Albert Whitman & Co., c1977.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.W244 Su 1977
Yellow house mystery / by Gertrude Chandler Warner ; illustrated by Mary Gehr.
Chicago : Albert Whitman & Co., c1981.
Temporarily at New Books
PZ7.W244 Ye 1981
Tags: New Books
Recent Acquisitions: Videos
The following videos are now available in the EKS Library:
Vietnam [videorecording] : a television history / a co-production of WGBH Boston with Central Independent Television, UK, and Antenne-2, France in association with LRE Productions ; produced by Judith Vecchione ; written by Austin Hoyt, Judith Vecchione.
S. Burlington, Vt. : WGBH Video, [2004]
DVD Video
DS557.7 .V547 2004
Last Chinese revolution [videorecording] / written and photographed by Ed Dubrowsky.
[S.l.] : Video Knowledge Inc., 2006.
DVD Video
DS775.7 .L37 2006
Fully awake [videorecording] : Black Mountain College / a film by Catherine Davis Zommer and Neeley House.
Elon, N.C. : Elon University, c2007.
DVD Video
NX405.B55 F85 2007
French connection [videorecording] / Twentieth Century Fox presents ; a Philip D’Antoni production ; in association with Schine-Moore Productions ; screenplay by Ernest Tidyman ; produced by Philip D’Antoni ; directed by William Friedkin. , [Widescreen].
Beverly Hills, Calif. : Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. : Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, c1971, 2005.
DVD Video
PN1995.9.D4 F74 2005
From here to eternity [videorecording] / Columbia Pictures Corporation presents ; screen play by Daniel Taradash ; produced by Buddy Adler ; directed by Fred Zinnemann.
Culver City, Calif. : Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, [2001]
DVD Video
PN1995.9.W3 F76 2001 Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Videos
Recent Acquisitions: Main Collection
Recent acquisitions now available on the New Books shelves!
Kabuki heroes on the Osaka stage, 1780-1830 / C. Andrew Gerstle with Timothy Clark, Akiko Yano.
Honolulu : University of Hawai’i Press, c2005.
Temporarily at New Books
NE1321.8 .G47 2005
Cultural norms and national security : police and military in postwar Japan / Peter J. Katzenstein.
Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, c1996.
Temporarily at New Books
UA845 .K376 1996
Tags: New Books
WU Special Collections Tapped
The Traveling Archivist Program (TAP) is a pilot project developed by the North Carolina State Historic Records Advisory Board and the North Carolina State Archives. The goal of the program is to offer direct assistance to institutions that preserve North Carolina’s historical heritage. TAP provides archival care instructions to institutions with collections potentially at risk (rare, delicate holdings, etc.).
In late November 2009 the EKS Library received confirmation from Mr. Jeffrey Crow (Deputy Secretary, Office of Archives and History) that the Wingate University Archives has been selected for the program. Forty institutions from around the state will be served throughout a series of two 8-month cycles beginning this Spring.
Contributor: Debra H. Hargett, E-Resources/Special Collections Librarian, MLIS
9th Annual Friends of the Ethel K. Smith Library Author Luncheon with Elissa Schappell
Please join the Friends of the Ethel K. Smith Library on Tuesday, March 16, for the 9th Annual Spring Author Luncheon. This year we welcome author Elissa Schappell. Ms. Schappell joined Vanity Fair in 1994. She is the editor of – Hot Type – Vanity Fair’s book page. She has been a senior editor at The Paris Review, co-founded Tin House Magazine, for which she is now editor-at-large, and frequently contributes to The New York Times Book Review. The author of Use Me (Harper Perennial, 2001), which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, she is also co-editor, with Jenny Offill, of the anthologies The Friend Who Got Away (Doubleday, 2005) and Money Changes Everything (Doubleday, 2007).
The luncheon will begin at 11:30 in the La Verne Dining Hall on the campus of Wingate University. For reservations and/or more information, please contact Luanne Barbee, 704-233-8093 or lbarbee@wingate.edu.
(photo credit: Emily Tobey)
Tags: Spring Author Luncheon
FOL Book Signing for Dr. Jerry Surratt
The FOL will hold a book signing and reception next month for Dr. Jerry Surratt, Wingate University Emeritus Faculty – History. Dr. Surratt is author of Part II (1985-2009) of The History of Wingate Baptist Church 1810-2009.
The book signing and reception will be held in the Efird Memorial Library, Wingate University Academic Quadrangle, on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:30am.
For more information, please contact Luanne Barbee at 704-233-8089 or lbarbee@wingate.edu.
Science Direct Maintenence
ScienceDirect will be unavailable due to scheduled upgrade maintenance for approximately 12 hours between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 23, 2010.
This upgrade is designed to allow the following:
- Redesigning the pages for easier reading.
- Adding graphical features to RSS and e-mail alerts.
- Improved book search by adding volume information to browse and quick search options.
- Added search refinements by adding a topics option–drawn from the keywords one selects–to one’s current search.
Tags: ScienceDirect
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (Bloomsbury 2009).
There is a story of a newly minted Ph.D. entering her first position as an assistant professor of philosophy. The department chair assigns her (as one might expect) to teach a basic course in the history of philosophy. “Well,” the new assistant returned with some hesitation “I suppose I could go back to Early Russell.” It is a bit of an exaggeration, but there was a time with the Anglo-American (or Analytic) School of philosophy that it seemed generally assumed that–with the possible exception of David Hume–philosophy, real philosophy, hadn’t really been practiced until the advent of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. Logicomix is a graphic novel of the world of Bertrand Russell.
A graphic novel, a comic book about a philosopher, you ask? Well, why not? First of all, Russell was not only a philosopher and public intellectual, he was an out-sized character. While Logicomix leaves out a fair bit of Russell’s life prior to World War II (and includes nothing thereafter), what it does include of Russell’s personal life will show that a philosopher does not have to be dull.
But why a graphic novel? There may be a number of reasons, let me take a stab at a few. First, analytic philosophy can seem extremely dry. This is in part because it is so formidable, so abstract, and so mathematical and removed from what one would think of as philosophizing that one does not dare approach it, lest one catch the contagion. The graphic novel serves to make the theory of types, set theory, the incompleteness theorem, Hilbert’s Hotel, and (naturally) Russell’s Paradox accessible, almost whimsical.
There is certainly the danger that any such illustrated treatment might serve only to reduce the topic to “Anglo-American Philosophy for Dummies.” Logicomix cleverly avoids any dumbing down so that even those who study philosophy for a living will enjoy themselves. There is also a lot going one in this novel. There Russell narrating his story as an argument for why his, pacifist that he is, will not join the protesters over America’s impending entry into World War II. In it he relates his quest for certainty and complete rationality and why that quest should lead him not to protest but a lecture on the “Role of Logic in Human Affairs.” Along the way we come across almost every major philosopher and mathematician of the first half of the twentieth century—along with Russell’s personal escapades (Both Russell’s time with Whitehead and especially Wittgenstein are well worth reading). This by itself goes back and forth. Add to this that the authors and illustrators appear in the novel to form a running commentary. If that were not enough, an attentive reader will find that the very structure of the book illustrates some of the logical problems that inspired and bedeviled philosophers of those palmy days.
So then, why Russell? To begin with, Russell is both formidable and approachable. He was, as I said, a public intellectual and worked to make his ideas the common coin of the realm. Also, because he was in contact with so many thinkers of the day, Logicomix is able to bring in an entire intellectual milieu.
And if you are not interested in types, universal sets, and the like, Logicomix asks questions about what it is about people (or at least certain people) to go to incredible lengths of abstraction in the pursuit of truth, rationality and certainty? Does such an obsession itself lead to madness, or is it a curious mad genius that impels some of us to pursue truth absolutely? A fair number of people around Russell either become mad or are wildly eccentric. It should also not go without saying that Logicomix makes a point that this ardent pursuit of rationality, truth and certainty came hand in hand with what has been to date one of the maddest centuries in human history. If uncertainty is a given, is the pursuit of truth in vain, or is it necessary for us to grasp what truth we can afford?
Library Hours for MLK Day
The Library will be opening at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, January 18th in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday. It will, however remain open until 12:00 midnight as usual.
