Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 48 — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~LOGIC IS FUN—4 by FRANK WILSON, B.Sc. As many of us know to our great disappointment, the fact that A loves B does not neces- sarily mean that B loves A! In other words, the relation of loving does not necessarily work in both directions. Given that it works in one direction, we cannot tell whether it works in the other; it may or it may not. Genera- tions of daisy-petal pickers have been concerned with this problem. The technical term for the type of relation that may or may not work both ways is non-symmetrical. Such rela- tions have the logical pro- perty of non-symmetry. It is with the logical properties of relations that we are now going to deal. The example given above shows how simple it all is really. You probably already know most of it; this article will merely give you 89 the technical terms and the logician’s particular slant. You will, of course, be aware that relational argu- ments are extremely common, in ordinary life as well as in scientific disputation. Lack of knowledge of the logical properties of relations is re- sponsible for a considerable amount of sloppy, dangerous thinking and unscientific dog- matism. When you have read this article, examine afresh some of your _ favourite political and religious texts. You may still believe in what they say, but you will prob- ably find it difficult to main- tain that they are logical! Thus, even though ' this article is designed merely to make you acquainted with the raw material of relational logic, yet it may nevertheless help you in being a bit more sensible — always assuming comiclooks.com