So yeah we're back. I’m hoping you enjoyed the previous course. If you’ve not seen it, what are we even doing? It’s a 3 minute read and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
Continuing on our journey with Logic; generally, to make a logical argument, we need three things: we need a premise, an inference and a conclusion which we normally call a universal conclusion.
But to explain these three parts of a logical argument, I will first branch into the types of logical argument. You might know them already, but if you don’t, we have two broad types of logical arguments or logical reasoning: deductive arguments and inductive arguments.
For a deductive argument, we deduct a conclusion from a given set of statements, which we refer to as our premises. For example: take the premise ‘Every writer loves writing’ and another premise ‘Ade is a writer.’ We can conclude that Ade loves writing.
This is a deductive argument because it follows naturally that the conclusion is a consequence of the premises. Ade must love writing, since Ade is a writer and every writer loves writing. That’s another way to put it.
For inductive reasoning, there’s a little difference.
When we are making an inductive argument, we are trying to induce, to bring in a conclusion after giving a set of premises for which that conclusion we are bringing in should stand true. The conclusion is not a part of the given premises. Unlike in deduction where we deduce, we make an argument smaller and we arrive at a truth. In deduction we do not introduce.
This is the kind of reasoning that occurs in the world of science. Let me tell you a short story. Many years ago when there was still a lot of controversies in the world of science, haha as if there are less now; but then there was a lot of disagreements as to what actually made up matter and particularly an atom.
The scientist Rutherford, who later became Lord Rutherford carried out an experiment where he bombarded positively charged particles otherwise known as alpha particles at a thin gold foil or sheet, and to his surprise he had some alpha particles deflect at large degree. This led Rutherford to conclude that the atoms of the gold foil had small dense nuclei.
Rutherford described this experience saying it was “as if you had fired a 15-inch [artillery] shell at a piece of tissue and it came back and hit you.” To Rutherford, this could only mean that there was a large mass at the centre of the ‘tissue.’
Logically his argument would be something like this:
Large angle deflections are only caused by relatively large masses within an atom of gold.
Therefore all atoms of all elements must have some form of large masses within them which can cause similar deflections if bombarded
This is inductive. He introduced a conclusion. Of course in science that inductive reasoning has to be confirmed by rigorous experimentation. In another course we will be talking of how logic relates with science, where they cross paths and where they leave each other.
The beauty is in the logic, quite expressly, I mean to say that logic is beautiful. There is something beautiful in arriving at a logical conclusion, of following through a logical argument. It is this beauty that draws us to logic, this beauty that most of the world does not see.