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The other instance which I shall quote is a truly astonishing one, and may be called the reductio ad absurdum of the theory of inconceivableness. Speaking of the laws of chemical composition, Dr.
His reductio ad absurdum allowed Wanhope to resume with a laugh, and say that Alford waited at the station in the singleness to which the tactful dispersion of the others had left him, and watched the train rapidly dwindle in the perspective, till an abrupt turn of the road carried it out of sight. Then he lifted his eyes with a long sigh, and looked round. Everywhere he saw Mrs.
Why, simply because he conceives that, by a legitimate extension of the same analogy, the design argument may be pushed to a reductio ad absurdum, so as to prove first the existence of an organized person, "an animal God," and, secondly, an infinite series of such organized persons, since one such must necessarily presuppose another, and that again another, and so on in infinitum.
There is no method except the highest poetic treatment which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the reductio ad absurdum of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood.
Always keep that in mind, Archie you who go about popping at men in their own houses with their own pistols." "Not going with me!" he exclaimed after they had dined sedately in the main dining-room of the hotel. "This is truly the reductio ad absurdum! Three times I've invaded the premises of my beloved's aunt and twice nearly got into trouble with policemen and gardeners.
It has even been held by some writers, that all ratiocination rests in the last resort on a reductio ad absurdum; since the way to enforce assent to it, in case of obscurity, would be to show that if the conclusion be denied we must deny some one at least of the premisses, which, as they are all supposed true, would be a contradiction.
Zeno of Elea, the friend and pupil of Parmenides, born 500 B.C., brought nothing new to the system, but invented Dialectics, the art of disputation, that department of logic which afterward became so powerful in the hands of Plato and Aristotle, and so generally admired among the schoolmen. It seeks to establish truth by refuting error through the reductio ad absurdum.
We have but one way of thinking derived from what we know, and we incontinently apply it to things of which we can know nothing, and then we quarrel with the result, which is a mere reductio ad absurdum, showing how utterly false and meagre are our hypotheses, premisses, and so-called axioms.
It is customary to argue this principle of impartiality, according to which the merely personal consideration is declared to be irrelevant to the determination of moral value, by a critique of egoism. The reductio ad absurdum of egoism has recently been formulated by G. E. Moore in as thorough and conclusive a manner as could be desired.
It was a lost cause for which He suffered; He was not the last of an august line, He was the smoking wick of a candle of folly; He was the reductio ad absurdam of a ludicrous syllogism based on impossible premises. He was not worth killing, He and His company of the insane they were no more than the crowned dunces of the world's school. Sanity sat on the solid benches of materialism.
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