Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.

 

Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.
--
Chapter 2, section 13 as cited in: Gregory Bateson (1988) Mind and nature: a necessary unity. p.134

 

Gregory Bateson

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Unlike Hegel’s progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically.

 

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If a model itself is “a poor representation of reality,” they write, “determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit.”

 

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Not knowing what one is looking for is pure agony. Too much analytical thinking, too much logic, too many meanings! Life has no logic, so why does there have to be logic to explain what it means? Also, what is logic? I think I may need to break away from analytical thinking; this is the cause of all my anxieties.

 

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So much of modern mathematical work is obviously on the border-line of logic, so much of modern logic is symbolic and formal, that the very close relationship of logic and mathematics has become obvious to every instructed student. The proof of their identity is, of course, a matter of detail: starting with premisses which would be universally admitted to belong to logic, and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right. If there are still those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge them to indicate at what point, in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica, they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It will then be obvious that any answer must be quite arbitrary.

 

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Even though principles of rationality seem as often violated as followed, we still cling to the notion that human thought should be rational, logical, and orderly. Much of law is based upon the concept of rational thought and behavior. Much of economic theory is based upon the model of the rational human who attempts to optimize personal benefit, utility, or comfort. Many scientists who study artificial intelligence use the mathematics of formal logic—the predicate calculus—as their major tool to simulate thought. [...] Human thought is not like logic; it is fundamentally different in kind and spirit. The difference is neither worse nor better. But it is the difference that leads to creative discovery and to great robustness of behavior.

 

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