Professor Sorensen (PS) sets himself up, duly following Borges, electing a predecessor and ending with an elegy, (“Fame as the Forgotten Philosopher”, that is, ruminations about his epitaph); then explains that jokes require set up by building expectation (p. 5) and sets up 176 specimens (84 of which pose questions with answers in the rear of the book) that “exhibit the interesting logic that can be found outside the classroom” — one gathers, in L’esprit comique (Magritte, 1928). Jokers laugh more and harder than their audiences (cf. Robert Provine Laughter, Ch 3). PS sets himself up also for this.

The old adage “mens sana in corpore sano” became adopted motto for gymnastics, whence gym shows exhibit the latter, while logic traditionally exhibits the former; whether there are in fact two sanities and whether they go together, enforce or enhance each other reciprocally, I shall tackle neither corporeally nor mentally here and now. Normally a riddle and the like is sometimes enjoyable, — in overdose, you know the sort of person who’s always out to outsmart you, gets closer to a syndrome — or a case of ‘delire’ (J-J. Lecercle Philosophy through the Looking Glass). A parody by adage involution. PS takes a cue from a certain Prof. Anon Ignorance (p. 160), who doesn’t want to know too much, hence she favors “Random Ethics”, to a crude alignment with Monty Python.

Now one doesn’t take issue with jokers, but let me briefly exhibit some downright howlers: PS asserts that Kant permits telling misleading truths (p. 157); denies that family resemblance is a family resemblance concept — here logic takes second seat to PS commitment to sheer biology (p. 235) — though it has long been known that it is (cf. Ben Tilghman But is it Art?, Ch. 2); and denies that ‘Anything is possible’ by smartly asserting “No. If anything is possible, then it is possible to prove that something is impossible. And if it is possible to prove that something is impossible, then necessarily, something is impossible”, totally ignoring the other iffy legs, such as, ‘if anything is possible, then it is possible to refute, disprove any proof’. And you’re left hanging on that matter. Up front PS warned ‘we must hold the language constant’ (p. 6), and still hops to three absurd impossibility samples: (some out of the blue nonsense about generals), ‘your toddler cannot kill himself by holding his breath’, and ‘a toddler could gain comfort from knowing he cannot be sucked down the bathtub drain’ (p. 267).

And plain silly specimens like: seeing the impossible (sic), a representation of it at any rate: a line is the sideways view of the square circle (p. 146) (indiscernible from sideviews of the zombie idea of the flat earth or the entire flatland), and: can you get out of a room without doors and windows?, yes, any way you want, “there are no doors or windows, so nothing blocks you” (p. 264). Cross a logician with a lobster and what do you get? “A snappy reply” — doesn’t those grab you? Deploying category mistake, too — bees are ‘familial’: they’ve no fathers but grandfathers — PS might as well continue: are worker ants skilled or unskilled bottom rank? pending the probability of their being on union contract or minimum hourly wage, on average. And to top Perec, PS calls a 50 x 50 matrix of BOB palindromes on his computer a ‘poem’ — in honour of Lewis Carroll no less (p. 80).

As the title announces, here’s a veritable hodge-podge, indeed a sammelsurium** — a descendent of the venerated children’s book genre with puzzles, games, odds and ends of generalities and trivia, considered by adults essential for youngsters’ educative amusement to spur their minds in some desirable way — aimed to install and further sanity, certain of its ways at any rate, in days drowning in ideologies, perhaps proper and sobering; but for which readership? (where’s OUP going?). Much of PS’s logic exhibition is for insiders only, readers with little or no training will have to skip many of his sweeping, shiny specimens. PS finds analogies to probability calcules, the sort predictors resort to where and when logic is mute, across every subject, matter, and story between heaven and earth, sometimes beyond both. And he contends the same deflate all dilemmas. Consequently PS preoccupies with numbers & geometric handling of everything from card and dice games to (strange excursions into militarism), math symbolization, semantics, economics, and confirmation and falsification, not to mention counterexamples, the slate spruced with anecdotes and snippets of biographies, incl. a certain Sorensen’s, a gamut of quotes from Plato to Johnny Carson to Richard Feynman, a willy-nilly assortment of characters, a lot one never heard of or would want to find, passingly mentioned as household names and PS’s close acquaintances. Not exactly the consolations of philosophizing, nor ‘edifying discourses’, rather the exasperation of out-of-classroom logicians — like amusement park rides going nowhere.

Since all PS curios are all-American, perhaps one should exclaim a salutary Gypsy Rose refrain “That’s entertainment!”

**Signing onto the roster of collections (beastiaries, of quotations, proverbs, prayers, etc.) in line with, e.g., Gould Oddities (P. Allen & Co. 1928/1944/1965), Hughes & Brecht Viscious Circles and Infinity (Penguin 1975), Poundstone Labyrinths of Reason (Doubleday 1988). While fx. quotation collections are most often ordered, before c. the 17^th century curiosity cabinets, root of the museum, had no ordering. This cabinet follows the older composition and need no guiding thread.

© 2016 Lars Aagaard-Mogensen

Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, Wassard Elea