irjones - ten major u.s. disasters on sig
....& not forgetting the logic of unrandom kaos.
Logic An attempt to formulate the processes of the ratiocinative mind, connecting idea with idea in a causal sequence, leading from predicate to conclusion. When the predicate consists of axioms, the species of logic is called deductive, or reasoning from the general to the particular; when the predicate is facts of experience, the logic is called inductive, or proceeding from particulars to generals. As a means of arriving at truth it alone is quite unreliable, as it is but a body of rules based on human experiences, and hence it is often rather a means of justifying conclusions after they have already been formed. This unreliability arises both from the difficulty of applying the process with rigid precision, and also from the uncertainty of the predicates in both systems. A study of what is written on logic will show that there is no agreement as to what constitutes an axiom -- whether it is an intuitive perception of truth, or whether it is merely an inference from experience. The same uncertainty exists as to the validity of the assumptions from which inductive chains of reasoning are drawn.
The Greek Skeptics and Pyrrhonists demonstrate that rigid logic leads to contradictory conclusions (antinomies), a fact which led them to doubt the efficacy of the mentality as a means of ascertaining truth. A strictly logical system may be found in pure mathematics, where we lay down axioms and postulates, which are to be treated as not open to question; and then proceed by rigid rules to the inevitable conclusion. But what is possible in an ideal science is not possible in an actual world of infinite variety and fluidity. Theosophy places the subject in a different light, because it recognizes the existence in man of powers of direct cognition by the awakened faculties of buddhi. Thus man has the means of a true deductive system; but even so, deduction must be considered together with induction, analogy, and other methods, as merely one of the various means by which we arrive at a knowledge of truth.
