At the mid-ride provisioning stop, I asked Fancy Fred whether, given the incessant precipitation, we would be heading off to someplace covered or a location at which we could have a fire, and he replied “both,” which narrowed the possible destinations to only a few and since Lincoln Park had already been eschewed, implied, logically, that our terminus would have to be somewhere north of the ship canal.
And when it was revealed that we needn’t purchase wood, only accelerant, one could conclude, with utmost certainty, that we were headed to the abode of fire dancers and hoboes, although, as it turned out neither group was in attendance, (unless you include our home-grown examples, emerging, as they tend to do, in the wake of beer and wormwood.)
In Western philosophy, the so-called “Law of Non-Contradiction,” which states that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, is considered one of the three basic principles of reasoning. Thus, it’s the height of irrationality, for example, to assert both that “It is raining,” and “It is not raining,” in the same place, at the same instant, in the same way.
And yet, oddly enough, it does seem possible to experience that very contradiction when you’re standing near flaming pallets underneath a public park shelter while streams of water pour off its flat roof like liquid icicles on the second longest night of the year.
So, perhaps this state of affairs is more appropriately rendered by a non-Western perspective, such as that which we find in the Vedic tradition, wherein the principle of non-contradiction is less strict. Rather, there is, in six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, a great deal more openness to the possibility of something and its opposite both being the case. As Professor.Narasimhan put it, “there are no false claims in Indian philosophy.”
Same goes for Thursday night adventures, where wet is dry, riding is standing, and every neither is both.
And when it was revealed that we needn’t purchase wood, only accelerant, one could conclude, with utmost certainty, that we were headed to the abode of fire dancers and hoboes, although, as it turned out neither group was in attendance, (unless you include our home-grown examples, emerging, as they tend to do, in the wake of beer and wormwood.)
In Western philosophy, the so-called “Law of Non-Contradiction,” which states that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, is considered one of the three basic principles of reasoning. Thus, it’s the height of irrationality, for example, to assert both that “It is raining,” and “It is not raining,” in the same place, at the same instant, in the same way.
And yet, oddly enough, it does seem possible to experience that very contradiction when you’re standing near flaming pallets underneath a public park shelter while streams of water pour off its flat roof like liquid icicles on the second longest night of the year.
So, perhaps this state of affairs is more appropriately rendered by a non-Western perspective, such as that which we find in the Vedic tradition, wherein the principle of non-contradiction is less strict. Rather, there is, in six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, a great deal more openness to the possibility of something and its opposite both being the case. As Professor.Narasimhan put it, “there are no false claims in Indian philosophy.”
Same goes for Thursday night adventures, where wet is dry, riding is standing, and every neither is both.
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