From: open1-AT-execpc.com
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 10:52:34 -0700
Subject: Re: PLC:Discovery versus Invention


Saicho-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> Dennis' most recent post says:
> 
> "Of course inventing is precisely what I am not doing.  An invention is the
> coming to
> be of something that was not there previously.  Discovery, which I am engaged
> in, is
> making manifest a reality that was previously obscure."
> 
> What I am now observing in Dennis Polis is a clearly fundamentalist position
> vis a vis logic and rationality (not to mention reality).  He claims that he
> is not inventing but discovering a "reality that was previously obscure."  I
> must ask this very old question in this regard: Was logic discovered?

Yes, if you mean by logic the express rules that guide correct thinking.  It was 
discovered in reflection on examples of correct and incorrect thinking - the 
method still used.

>  Or,
> more down to earth: Was pi discovered?  Of course I assume that Dennis will
> say yes to both -- certainly to the last question.

You are correct.

> But if logic was
> discovered, who discovered it and when and what were the details of the
> discovery?  

As far as an explicit formulation of its rules - Aristotle, for which see the 
Organon.  As far as in informal understanding of the rules goes, that is lost in 
the mists of time.

> If pi was discovered, ditto?

Sorry, my history of mathematics is not that good.  I would guess a Pythagorean, 
but it was no doubt known approxiamtely and used practically for as long as there 
were circular objects to be clad.

> As I see it pi is a number which is
> useful to do all sorts of things, the most obvious one being to relate
> various parameters of a circle.  But a circle, in turn, which is a continuous
> line, equidistant everywhere from a single point, requires the definition of
> "continuous" and the definition of a point.

It requires no explicit definition to construct or use circles, but the explicit 
definition grows out of the practice of construction with a fixed center and 
radius.

> The definition of a continuous
> line was invented (opps! discovered) by Leibniz and Newton we are told and
> is, to the lay person, no easy thing to comprehend.  Dennis claims, I suppose
> that the theory of infinitesimals was laying around awaiting discovery, as
> was pi.

No, that is not my claim.  A theory is an explict set of related propositions 
constructed to organize some field of knowledge.  The premises may be discovered 
or hypothsized, and usually there is a little of each.  Explicit sets of 
propositions do not lay around waiting to be discovered.  What is discovered are 
certain ways of understanding reality, which pre-exist only in the capacity of 
reality to be understood in those ways.  So the theories are constructed, or, if 
you will, invented, but the realities (intelligibilities) that the theories 
disclose were, thereby, discovered.

>  Why is it so difficult to think of these things as inventions?
>  Aren't they, seen as inventions, as wonderful, even as beautiful, as if they
> were contained in the great Corpus Iuris in the realm of the supreme being?

It is not difficult at all to think of theories as inventions.  See above.

> Logic is a construction of concepts that provides for consistent expressions
> of linguistic inference.

No.  Logic is a set of rules for the valid elaboration of knowledge.  Language 
may express knowledge, and so logic my be imaged in linguistic rules, but this 
entails complexification with linguistic ambiguites not present in intentional 
logic. Linguistic logic, for want of a better name, spends much of its time and 
energy on issues of linguistic ambiguity which have no counterpart in valid 
intentional elaboration.

>  As such it is part of (or can be considered as separate) language. 

Not at all. Language has to do with communication. Logic with valid 
connection-making. Certainly connections can be expressed for communication, and 
communication can help us to make connections, but making intellectual 
connections is not communicating.  It does not even necessarily involve the use 
of linguistic signs as can be told from the expereince of not being able to find 
the right word to express our thought.

> Language is a human tool, developed (if one dislikes
> “invented”) along with the rest of the human. 

yes.

> I also find this language of
> ours to be full of wonder and beauty, capable of so much good and ill,.  but
> to extract a part of it, any part, (but especially its rules) and ascribe to
> it the mantle of universality or truth seems to me the height of arrogance
> and folly.

Yes.  English syntax is not Chinese syntax.  However, the rules for the valid 
elaboration of knowledge are transcultural and translingustic.  If you doubt this 
compare the rules given in Stchertatshy's _Buddhist Logic_ to those of the 
Aristotelian tradition.

> And, there is no need to do this.  If there is a need, please tell
> me what it is and whence it comes. I happen to see man the tool maker as a
> pretty fantastic creature who needs no help from .  .  .  ??
> 
> Regards to all,
> Saicho

Cultural relativity is a wonderful ploy, but its usefulness in evading the 
obvious is severely reduced when one actually examines the data.

Dennis Polis