Logical Thinking

by Richard L. Purtill

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060452978
• ISBN13: 9780060452971
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 157 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Working Out The Left Side of the Brain

Someone once described a drink--singapore sling? kamikaze? --as sneaking up behind you and ripping your scalp off. It might be a bit much to say this book does that, but it does get you accidentally thinking. It begins harmlessly enough, with rather simple, obvious ideas, and seems the sort of textbook that there's no point reading and which accompany classes there is no point taking. It looks to be a logic textbook, but there's nothing about Ps and Qs and this set and that element, nor arcane symbols indicating what has a union with who. In fact, the opening examples are from Spinoza--just the sort of thing to interest a professional philosopher, and further reason for the casual student to put the book down. Later examples show the book's 1972 pedigree, and are drawn from women's liberation, rap sessions, the Kennedy assasination and rock music. Still no Ps and Qs, but now there's a bit on organization and making those horrible outlines they always suggest in English class before writing a paper. Except it's about over organization and how those outlines aren't the best way to get the gray matter going, and the exercises help you determine your writing and thinking style and what works best with your brain. Before you know it, you can also spot false ploys in advertising, the ad hominem and card stacking fallacies in arguments, and the relation between a premise and conclusion. Finally, like some drink sneaking up on you, all this leads into four chapters of Ps and Qs, also known as inductive and deductive reasoning. Some thirty years later, this 1972 paperback in the original Harper and Row edition shows its age. Harper and Row is now HarperCollins, Western Washington State College where Dr. Purtill taught long since became Western Washington University, and Charlie Brown is mispelled "Charley Brown." A new edition would be welcome, but if some of the examples seem quaint, the book remains a relatively painless workout for the synapses and bulking up on the Ps and Qs.