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Logic of Alice: Clear Thinking in Wonderland
Many commentaries have been devoted to Lewis Carroll's masterpiece, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The interpretations range from Freudian analysis to speculations about the real-life people who may have inspired the animal characters. In this unique approach to interpreting Alice, the fruit of ten years of research, Dr. Bernard M. Patten shows that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, fused his passion for logic, mathematics, and games with his love of words and nonsense stories to produce a multifaceted, intricately structured work of literature. Patten provides a chapter-by-chapter skeleton key to Alice, which meticulously demonstrates how its various episodes reveal Dodgson's profound knowledge of the rules of clear thinking, informal and formal logic, symbolic logic, and human nature.As Patten makes clear, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, far from being just an entertaining children's book, is more complex and deeply reflective of Dodgson's character than it may seem. By making an effort to understand its deeper layers, both children and adults may profit from this masterful tale by learning to think better and, along the way, having fun.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 16, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 26, 2011
A man who doesn't believe in Robinson Crusoe . . . is a man with a loose screw in his understanding. or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person with a livelier faith.
The Moonstone
Besides being near contemporaries, what does Betteredge in the Moonstone have in common with Alice and her adventures in Wonderland (Why is raven like a writing desk?)? All in good time.
I grew up not with the book by Lewis Carroll, but the Disney cartoon. I suppose my youngest child will grow up on the live action version. Still even then, I knew many episodes quite well and was easily convinced as an undergraduate that Alice's adventures, far from being examples of nonsense were indeed filled with logical arguments and fallacies. (at this point I should hasten to add that I did eventually read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for myself, and yes it is a logician's paradise). So then, imagine my delight at coming across a book that was reputed to outline all subtlety of reasoned argument in the mist of utter confusion.
Now imagine my utter disappointment. The Logic of Alice is a sprawling work that says more about its author than about clear thinking itself. We get his opinions of religion, politics, science, sex, child-rearing, ethics and a host of other topics. Yes logic and sound reasoning pervade, but often Alice's encounters seem to be more of a launch-pad for what Patten deems to be clear thinking than the problems that actually confront Alice.
Here Patten is very much like Betteredge. In the Moonstone, Betteredge has an incredible knack for pulling random passages from Robinson Crusoe to shed light on murder, human nature, and the vicissitudes of life. While hardly random (Patten treats each chapter of Alice's Adventure in turn and in proper order) one receives the distinct impression that he could invoke Carroll's book to illustrate any opinion he would which to hold forth on.
This does make for some problems from the very beginning. Before Alice has her adventures, she is sitting bored and tired. Glancing briefly at her sister's book she wonders of what use it might be since it contains neither pictures nor conversations. Patten accuses Alice of over generalizing--and then proceeds to discuss at length the dangers of such practices. But has Alice really over-generalized? Language is, as Patten often notes, a flexible and somewhat inaccurate device at times. At best one can argue that Alice does understand what people see in books without conversations or illustrations, not that Alice believes they are of no utility whatsoever. One could hardly go off on such a limited conclusion, however.
Worse, Patton makes errors in logic.
For instance, to illustrate the fallacy of the four-term syllogism, Patten presents the following:
1. All men are rational
2. Women are not men
3. Therefore, women are not rational
Now, while it is obvious that the argument equivocates in its use of "men," and so is invalid, the middle terms are not properly distributed for this particular form of syllogism (for those who have taken logic, you may recognize this as AEE, rather AII, which is the mood Patton seems to be assuming). To see this, look a the following, which is in the same mood and does not equivocate with the middle term.
1. All Blue Jays are birds
2. Robins are not Blue Jays
3. Therefore Robins are not birds
At times Patton seems to miss the thrust of the arguments that Carroll's characters are making. For instance, Patton argues that the Cheshire Cat is using circular reasoning. The argument would go something like this:
1. Everyone is mad here. I'm mad, you (Alice) are mad . . .
2. But I'm not mad (says Alice)
3. But you (Alice) must be, since you are here.
However, one could easily read the Cheshire Cat as arguing,
1. Everyone I've met here, whether they are mad or not are in fact mad
2. You (Alice) are here
3. Therefore you (Alice) are [probably] mad.
If one looks about, it is not too hard to find more such short comings. Even so, The Logic of Alice is not without its interesting bits. When he gets to actually examining Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Patten can be quite illuminating. For starters, he eschews some of the more fantastical interpretations (he has great fun with the pool of tears somehow being amniotic fluid). There are also some interesting and fairly straight-foreword interpretation of some of the characters. For instance, according to Patten, Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) stuttered and was known as Dodo, and so perhaps Carroll inserted himself into his own story.
These nuggets, however, are simply too few. And mores the pity, because Patten obviously had much more to say about Alice if he had gone down his own particular rabbit hole.
The Moonstone
Besides being near contemporaries, what does Betteredge in the Moonstone have in common with Alice and her adventures in Wonderland (Why is raven like a writing desk?)? All in good time.
I grew up not with the book by Lewis Carroll, but the Disney cartoon. I suppose my youngest child will grow up on the live action version. Still even then, I knew many episodes quite well and was easily convinced as an undergraduate that Alice's adventures, far from being examples of nonsense were indeed filled with logical arguments and fallacies. (at this point I should hasten to add that I did eventually read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for myself, and yes it is a logician's paradise). So then, imagine my delight at coming across a book that was reputed to outline all subtlety of reasoned argument in the mist of utter confusion.
Now imagine my utter disappointment. The Logic of Alice is a sprawling work that says more about its author than about clear thinking itself. We get his opinions of religion, politics, science, sex, child-rearing, ethics and a host of other topics. Yes logic and sound reasoning pervade, but often Alice's encounters seem to be more of a launch-pad for what Patten deems to be clear thinking than the problems that actually confront Alice.
Here Patten is very much like Betteredge. In the Moonstone, Betteredge has an incredible knack for pulling random passages from Robinson Crusoe to shed light on murder, human nature, and the vicissitudes of life. While hardly random (Patten treats each chapter of Alice's Adventure in turn and in proper order) one receives the distinct impression that he could invoke Carroll's book to illustrate any opinion he would which to hold forth on.
This does make for some problems from the very beginning. Before Alice has her adventures, she is sitting bored and tired. Glancing briefly at her sister's book she wonders of what use it might be since it contains neither pictures nor conversations. Patten accuses Alice of over generalizing--and then proceeds to discuss at length the dangers of such practices. But has Alice really over-generalized? Language is, as Patten often notes, a flexible and somewhat inaccurate device at times. At best one can argue that Alice does understand what people see in books without conversations or illustrations, not that Alice believes they are of no utility whatsoever. One could hardly go off on such a limited conclusion, however.
Worse, Patton makes errors in logic.
For instance, to illustrate the fallacy of the four-term syllogism, Patten presents the following:
1. All men are rational
2. Women are not men
3. Therefore, women are not rational
Now, while it is obvious that the argument equivocates in its use of "men," and so is invalid, the middle terms are not properly distributed for this particular form of syllogism (for those who have taken logic, you may recognize this as AEE, rather AII, which is the mood Patton seems to be assuming). To see this, look a the following, which is in the same mood and does not equivocate with the middle term.
1. All Blue Jays are birds
2. Robins are not Blue Jays
3. Therefore Robins are not birds
At times Patton seems to miss the thrust of the arguments that Carroll's characters are making. For instance, Patton argues that the Cheshire Cat is using circular reasoning. The argument would go something like this:
1. Everyone is mad here. I'm mad, you (Alice) are mad . . .
2. But I'm not mad (says Alice)
3. But you (Alice) must be, since you are here.
However, one could easily read the Cheshire Cat as arguing,
1. Everyone I've met here, whether they are mad or not are in fact mad
2. You (Alice) are here
3. Therefore you (Alice) are [probably] mad.
If one looks about, it is not too hard to find more such short comings. Even so, The Logic of Alice is not without its interesting bits. When he gets to actually examining Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Patten can be quite illuminating. For starters, he eschews some of the more fantastical interpretations (he has great fun with the pool of tears somehow being amniotic fluid). There are also some interesting and fairly straight-foreword interpretation of some of the characters. For instance, according to Patten, Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) stuttered and was known as Dodo, and so perhaps Carroll inserted himself into his own story.
These nuggets, however, are simply too few. And mores the pity, because Patten obviously had much more to say about Alice if he had gone down his own particular rabbit hole.
July 19, 2018
Um autor que procura ser interessante e didático, mas na verdade deixa transparecer certa arrogância que torna a leitura algo difícil de aturar...
Coloca algumas questões interessantes e propõe uma leitura do livro bastante diversa da comum, mas para escrever sobre um livro cuja personagem principal é uma CRIANÇA, o autor, no mínimo, deveria considerar as limitações de raciocínio lógico de uma menina de 7 anos antes de "condená-la" por não pensar como um matemático universitário.
Recomendaria mais a leitura de Piaget do que este livro.
Coloca algumas questões interessantes e propõe uma leitura do livro bastante diversa da comum, mas para escrever sobre um livro cuja personagem principal é uma CRIANÇA, o autor, no mínimo, deveria considerar as limitações de raciocínio lógico de uma menina de 7 anos antes de "condená-la" por não pensar como um matemático universitário.
Recomendaria mais a leitura de Piaget do que este livro.
June 15, 2022
If you're writing a book about a book, you should at least have some knowledge about comparative literature, but this author has none whatsoever. He makes claims without mentioning the sources, discards theories by Freud and Aristotle like it's nothing. True, I'm not a fan of Freud either, but you can't just disregard the theories without diving into them first. And just bluntly saying that Aristotle was wrong, without proof or sources. Yeah no. Who are you, even?
Besides, he makes claims that are wrong and has been disproven by actual scholars, like Robert Douglas Fairhurst in The story of Alice (See! Source! You could learn something from me!). He also frequently misuses the names Lewis Carroll and Charles Dodgson. You cannot say anything about what Lewis Carroll did or didn't do, because he. wasnt. real. Come on, basic knowledge!
I should have known when I bought this book for a couple of Euros at the boekenfestijn, but I'm such a fan of Alice's adventures of Wonderland that I was interested in this book and brought it home with me. If I had read the first pages right there, I wouldn't have.
I'm not even gonna sell the book, it's going straight into the paper bin, because this is crap.
Besides, he makes claims that are wrong and has been disproven by actual scholars, like Robert Douglas Fairhurst in The story of Alice (See! Source! You could learn something from me!). He also frequently misuses the names Lewis Carroll and Charles Dodgson. You cannot say anything about what Lewis Carroll did or didn't do, because he. wasnt. real. Come on, basic knowledge!
I should have known when I bought this book for a couple of Euros at the boekenfestijn, but I'm such a fan of Alice's adventures of Wonderland that I was interested in this book and brought it home with me. If I had read the first pages right there, I wouldn't have.
I'm not even gonna sell the book, it's going straight into the paper bin, because this is crap.
September 9, 2015
This is a book written about logic and clear thinking for the American audience. Therefore, if you aren't a logic enthusiast and found it in the book, I don't think you should talk smack about the book just because of it.
There are actual FACTUAL ERRORS in this book. Not about logic, I trust Mr Patten to be an expert in his own field, but in Alice facts:
On numerous occasions it is stated Alice is seven and a half (see page 156 of the 2009 edition). This is simply not so. AAW takes place on Alice's birthday, May 4 (Alice Liddell's birthday as well),and she is seven and a half in Looking-Glass.
Alice meets the Caterpillar at the end of chapter 4, not at the beginning of chapter 5 (see page 154).
The author goes on to discuss Alice's neck (pages 162-163). He looks at Tenniel's pictures, at Dodgson's pictures, at Alice Liddell photographs and says that Alice's neck is not long. Therefore, the Pigeon must be wrong in thinking her neck is wrong and assuming she's a serpent. Mr Patten looks at every shred of evidence, yet fails to read the text of AAW. It is clearly stated that Alice's neck has grown immensely long and she can not see her hands. Granted, the mushroom is meant to make her grown bigger or smaller, not just certain parts of her, but this is the simple fact of what happens in the book at that time. Alice herself thinks that her neck bends like a serpent, so it wouldn't be so strange for the pigeon to come to the same conclusion.
If you are a student of logic, you'll read books about logic. If you are a fan of Alice, you'll read about Alice. It feels that the Venn diagram of those two groups wouldn't be that big, so the majority of the readers od this book are going to be Alice fans.
I count myself as one of them. I bought this book because I wanted to know more about this interpretation of Alice's journey. I am not questioning the logic of this book, just the Alice bit. If I noticed these mistakes in it, I wonder how many more there actually are.
I feel a little exploited. This book is full of sidelines and examples which are meant to help the reader and they do most of the time. I think the politicians and the family stories are okay and interesting, but sometimes too much is too much (I am talking about the Katherine McPhee part).
I bought this book. It was expensive. I am not satisfied.
There are actual FACTUAL ERRORS in this book. Not about logic, I trust Mr Patten to be an expert in his own field, but in Alice facts:
On numerous occasions it is stated Alice is seven and a half (see page 156 of the 2009 edition). This is simply not so. AAW takes place on Alice's birthday, May 4 (Alice Liddell's birthday as well),and she is seven and a half in Looking-Glass.
Alice meets the Caterpillar at the end of chapter 4, not at the beginning of chapter 5 (see page 154).
The author goes on to discuss Alice's neck (pages 162-163). He looks at Tenniel's pictures, at Dodgson's pictures, at Alice Liddell photographs and says that Alice's neck is not long. Therefore, the Pigeon must be wrong in thinking her neck is wrong and assuming she's a serpent. Mr Patten looks at every shred of evidence, yet fails to read the text of AAW. It is clearly stated that Alice's neck has grown immensely long and she can not see her hands. Granted, the mushroom is meant to make her grown bigger or smaller, not just certain parts of her, but this is the simple fact of what happens in the book at that time. Alice herself thinks that her neck bends like a serpent, so it wouldn't be so strange for the pigeon to come to the same conclusion.
If you are a student of logic, you'll read books about logic. If you are a fan of Alice, you'll read about Alice. It feels that the Venn diagram of those two groups wouldn't be that big, so the majority of the readers od this book are going to be Alice fans.
I count myself as one of them. I bought this book because I wanted to know more about this interpretation of Alice's journey. I am not questioning the logic of this book, just the Alice bit. If I noticed these mistakes in it, I wonder how many more there actually are.
I feel a little exploited. This book is full of sidelines and examples which are meant to help the reader and they do most of the time. I think the politicians and the family stories are okay and interesting, but sometimes too much is too much (I am talking about the Katherine McPhee part).
I bought this book. It was expensive. I am not satisfied.
March 19, 2020
The Logic of Alice was a helpful text for me because I've never taken philosophy. Learning new things via a familiar book that I love gave me an enjoyable introduction to the subject. My only complaint is that there was too much Dr. Patten and too many stories about Dr. Patten's granddaughter. I understand why Bernard Patton wrote about his life and his granddaughter's antics- she is a young girl like Alice. (But is she really as precocious and introspective as the author makes her sound?) Regardless, I took a lot of notes about false arguments and "bad thinking" and will continue to build my understanding of philosophy.
June 18, 2019
Readable and entertaining, but contains too many logical fallacies for me to recommend it.
January 7, 2024
I recommend reading this after falling into a pool of your own tears, for it is the driest thing I know.
February 28, 2018
The author posits that Alice's journey is one of traveling from muddled, illogical thought to — at the very least — clearer, more rational thinking. Rather than being a book about logic in Alice, though, it uses the Alice story to describe most of the false argumentative strategies and other tenets of logic while making a great many comparisons to illogical thinking in the Bush II presidency, the Iraq War, and the Enron debacle. And, while I'm a fan of none of those thing, the political sidebars took it away from the Alice story, which was my reason for wanting to read it in the first place. I also can't help but think his head would explode if he were writing this book today.
Patten infuses a lot of personality into his book, unfortunately, his personality appears to be that of a slightly creepy, out-of-touch old guy. I could have done without the mentions of his sex life and his "hey, I'm 'hip' as the young kids say" language.
This might be useful as a text for a Logic 101 class, but it didn't bring a lot to my understanding or appreciation of Alice.
Patten infuses a lot of personality into his book, unfortunately, his personality appears to be that of a slightly creepy, out-of-touch old guy. I could have done without the mentions of his sex life and his "hey, I'm 'hip' as the young kids say" language.
This might be useful as a text for a Logic 101 class, but it didn't bring a lot to my understanding or appreciation of Alice.
July 12, 2013
An interesting, philosophical take on Carrol's Wonderland and how it relates to the use of formal logic in language, but Patten is so incredibly casual with his own interpretations of everything (breaking the 4th wall to speak to the readers, use of colloquialisms/slang, devolving into simple language as if retelling a story to fellow fraternity members) that the whole piece was just jarring and not at all enjoyable to read. Had he stuck with a more academic voice, this book would have remained far more interesting (oddly enough), but the voice of the writing just bogs this down far too much for me to have enjoyed it. Which is unfortunate as a lot of Patten's analyses are truly captivating and make me want to re-read Carrol's works. Off-putting to be sure.
February 14, 2016
This is not a book for everyone. For someone who is interested in the principles of Logic and how they apply to the Alice in Wonderland story, though, it's fascinating.
The author puts down the view of some people that Dodgson had an unhealthy interest in young girls. He's also quite outspoken in his opinions about various other people and issues (especially politicians.) What he does is follow the story of Alice in Wonderland from the start on and gives specific examples of poor or good use of logic and just what type of logic is being used (or abused.)
I thought the book was really interesting and quite humorous at times.
The author puts down the view of some people that Dodgson had an unhealthy interest in young girls. He's also quite outspoken in his opinions about various other people and issues (especially politicians.) What he does is follow the story of Alice in Wonderland from the start on and gives specific examples of poor or good use of logic and just what type of logic is being used (or abused.)
I thought the book was really interesting and quite humorous at times.
July 20, 2009
This book wasn''t the greatest read I ever had. the writer wasn't even the best. However, out of all the logic books I have read this one was the best at conveying its message and establishing the importance of logic. While most logic books make everything factual and formulaic, this book was able to convey how not only Logic is necessary to understand how Lewis Carrol wrote his books but the author shows the problems that exist in society as he put it becasue we allow for everyone to have an opinion, even when they shouldn't be allowed to.
Read
August 12, 2016"I have a deep dread of argument on religious topics. My view of life is, that it's next to impossible to convince anybody of anything because one of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another."
June 17, 2012
I am taking notes.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews