_The Infallibility of Logistic_
On the question of fertility, it seems M. Couturat has naïve illusions. Logistic, according to him, lends invention 'stilts and wings,' and on the next page: "_Ten years ago_, Peano published the first edition of his _Formulaire_." How is that, ten years of wings and not to have flown!
I have the highest esteem for Peano, who has done very pretty things (for instance his 'space-filling curve,' a phrase now discarded); but after all he has not gone further nor higher nor quicker than the majority of wingless mathematicians, and would have done just as well with his legs.
On the contrary I see in logistic only shackles for the inventor. It is no aid to conciseness--far from it, and if twenty-seven equations were necessary to establish that 1 is a number, how many would be needed to prove a real theorem? If we distinguish, with Whitehead, the individual _x_, the class of which the only member is _x_ and which shall be called [iota]_x_, then the class of which the only member is the class of which the only member is _x_ and which shall be called [mu]_x_, do you think these distinctions, useful as they may be, go far to quicken our pace?
Logistic forces us to say all that is ordinarily left to be understood; it makes us advance step by step; this is perhaps surer but not quicker.
It is not wings you logisticians give us, but leading-strings. And then we have the right to require that these leading-strings prevent our falling. This will be their only excuse. When a bond does not bear much interest, it should at least be an investment for a father of a family.
Should your rules be followed blindly? Yes, else only intuition could enable us to distinguish among them; but then they must be infallible; for only in an infallible authority can one have a blind confidence. This, therefore, is for you a necessity. Infallible you shall be, or not at all.
You have no right to say to us: "It is true we make mistakes, but so do you." For us to blunder is a misfortune, a very great misfortune; for you it is death.
Nor may you ask: Does the infallibility of arithmetic prevent errors in addition? The rules of calculation are infallible, and yet we see those blunder _who do not apply these rules_; but in checking their calculation it is at once seen where they went wrong. Here it is not at all the case; the logicians _have applied_ their rules, and they have fallen into contradiction; and so true is this, that they are preparing to change these rules and to "sacrifice the notion of class." Why change them if they were infallible?
"We are not obliged," you say, "to solve _hic et nunc_ all possible problems." Oh, we do not ask so much of you. If, in face of a problem, you would give _no_ solution, we should have nothing to say; but on the contrary you give us _two_ of them and those contradictory, and consequently at least one false; this it is which is failure.
Russell seeks to reconcile these contradictions, which can only be done, according to him, "by restricting or even sacrificing the notion of class." And M. Couturat, discovering the success of his attempt, adds: "If the logicians succeed where others have failed, M. Poincaré will remember this phrase, and give the honor of the solution to logistic."
But no! Logistic exists, it has its code which has already had four editions; or rather this code is logistic itself. Is Mr. Russell preparing to show that one at least of the two contradictory reasonings has transgressed the code? Not at all; he is preparing to change these laws and to abrogate a certain number of them. If he succeeds, I shall give the honor of it to Russell's intuition and not to the Peanian logistic which he will have destroyed.
