Tuesday 16 April 2013

Being thought stupid and being thought clever have both served me in life, the latter more to my stupid gratification, the former, more to my clever advantage.
What people take to be implications can become implications by their taking them as such. Consider Darwinism (or mere evolutionism): people have taken its implications to be irreligion and atheism, hence its implications have been irreligion and atheism. But it must be borne in mind that we are dealing here with two kinds of implication: logical and factual-effective. Darwinism does not logically imply irreligion or atheism, but people have taken it to do so, hence it has factually-effectively implied it. So to rephrase the opening sentence: what people take to be logical implications can become factual-effective implications by their taking them as such. The converse of course does not hold good.