The Tyranny of Logic
AYRES, C. E.
The Tyranny of Logic Guides to Straight Thinking. By Stuart Chase. Harper. 212 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, University of Texas BEFORE discussing Guides...
...Chase with not having tackled this particular problem...
...Was Unamuno joking...
...He did indeed...
...Only a few weeks ago, a Time reviewer quoted the great Spanish philosopher, Unamuno, as having said in the course of an Oxford lecture, "He alone is truly wise who is conscious of his madness...
...Reviewed by C. E. Ayres Professor of economics, University of Texas BEFORE discussing Guides to Straight Thinking...
...This thought receives further emphasis from another feature of the present book...
...Chase points out, they received from the medieval schoolmen, though they were first tagged by Aristotle...
...So what...
...But the present book exemplifies another interest...
...And why did the ancients lapse from the straight thinking of the Greeks into the mysticism and superstition of the centuries that followed...
...There is nothing wrong with this...
...In one chapter, he shows us how all the fallacies in the book were committed by the opponents of zoning in his Connecticut home town, from which I hazard the inference that Mr...
...Who of us has not at one time or another derived a certain satisfaction from being able to tag an opponent's argument as a post hoc error or an argumentum ad hoininem...
...Take the racist prejudices by which the segregation issue is so beclouded: Just what are they...
...Surely another answer is at least possible—namely, that it takes more than identifying fallacies to keep mankind on the straight and narrow path...
...All the wise are conscious of madness...
...But surely it is the logic of area development which commands Mr...
...Stuart Chase's book performed an important and valuable service by bringing this matter home to a great many people who had no other contact with semantics...
...and it is quite true, as the author remarks in his preface, that he has cited "more bad logic by conservatives than by liberals...
...What are the erroneous beliefs that give rise to so much nonsense...
...Thus," continued the reviewer, "he lived and performed, an honored enigma...
...He has never forsworn these principles or abandoned these efforts...
...Or is formal logic less of a help than one might think...
...In 1938, he published The Tyranny of Words...
...Good enough...
...But that particular remark is as juicy an "undistributed middle" as any Mr...
...Chase's attitude toward "the Greeks" is a magnificent illustration of his number 7 fallacy, ad verecundiam...
...My question is whether being able to apply such tags to our opponents is going to keep our own thinking straight...
...Chase's assent, as it does mine, rather than that of verbal discourse...
...These fallacies have Latin names which, as Mr...
...At that time, the new science of semantics was beginning to attract a great deal of attention, and quite properly so...
...Its concern is with the fallacies to which all human discourse is prone, most particularly with a list of 13 fallacies which the author has selected from the 21 listed by the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and to each of which he devotes a chapter...
...I am not questioning the straightness of Stuart Chase's thinking in the area in which I have always admired him...
...of course, true that words convey a variety of suggestions by which hearers may be tricked and cajoled even more than informed, and it is therefore important to all of us that we should watch our words—and especially other people's words...
...It is...
...Indeed, on the basis of a whole series of essays, of which I would cite Tomorrow's Trade as representative, he has laid a strong claim to be considered our leading common-sense economist—that, as distinguished from the scholasticism which is the curse of the academic economics of the present day...
...I must be careful to avoid what might be called the reviewer's fallacy of suggesting that the author should have written another book than the one under consideration...
...Nevertheless, it is possible to exaggerate the power of the verbal apparatus of communication, and I think Chase's later essays in this field have done so...
...Chase favors zoning...
...As is usual with Chase, its title was a stroke of genius...
...I admired him as a "sun worshiper," and I applauded The Tragedy of Waste and Your Money's Worth...
...Certainly I do not mean to tax Mr...
...therefore I am truly wise...
...I am conscious of my madness...
...But if identifying fallacies is a guide to straight thinking, why were the medieval schoolmen so parabolic...
...Indeed, Mr...
...Chase opens his first chapter by quoting Shaw to the effect that "we use our reason only to support our prejudices," and this theme recurs throughout the book...
...therefore I am wise...
...That phrase by itself is calculated to put the unwary on their guard...
...But such being the case, surely examining our prejudices (and especially the ones by which we are currently afflicted) would be a much more salutary exercise than tagging the fallacies by the use of which we verbalize them...
...it is something else...
...Chase's answer seems to be that the Greeks were giants of the intellect the like of which were not seen at least until the appearance of Galileo and Francis Bacon...
...I am conscious of madness...
...I think the present volume does...
...I want to make it clear that I have been an admirer of Stuart Chase for many years...
...Is the reviewer joking...
...Chase has found...
...Guides to Straight Thinking is full of illustrative anecdotes, all of which make very good reading...
...With the onset of the Depression, he became one of its leading lay interpreters and a great and powerful champion of the objectives of the New Deal, a phrase of which I have always considered him to have been the original author...
...My point is rather that on his own showing it is not lack of expository skill that twists our thinking...
Vol. 39 • October 1956 • No. 40
