Harry Terhanian.com

Don’t look toward the one that speaks, but see the one that prompts the speaker.

Without wind the leaves will not move.

Logical argument arrives at conclusions through inference. If one sees the leaves of a tree moving, they can infer that there must be wind. If one sees smoke, one can infer that there is fire.

This is not always true. Perhaps there could also be an unseen cause such as a man shaking the tree and making the leaves move. Perhaps there is an earth tremor that causes the leaves of the tree to shake. There could be thick fog rising over the hill and giving the impression that there is smoke. One could mistake a cloud on the horizon for smoke in the distance. Logical argument does not always lead to the truth, nor is inference a perfect source of knowledge.

There was a brahmin in India who logically reasoned that the cow is an animal and he is a brahmin of the highest caste. In the Vedic literature it says that cow dung is pure. He reasoned that since he is a brahmin and superior to the cow by birth, education, and social status, then his stool must be purer than the cow’s dung. His argument was logical. Yet, when one analyzes the dung of a cow and the stool of the brahmin, it is seen that the cow dung has antiseptic qualities and the stool of humans is rife with harmful bacteria. This is an example where logical argument can fall short of the truth due to unknown factors.

Villagers in Southeast Asia noticed that once a year baby scorpions emerge from patty fields. They erroneously concluded that scorpions are born from the patty fields. What they did not see or understand was that the mother scorpions laid their eggs in the patty fields. Gradually the eggs developed and hatched and the baby scorpions emerged from the fields. Inference is not a perfect source of knowledge. Still it can be very useful to arrive at knowledge if one uses it very carefully and tries to verify its vaildity by other means such as direct observation, experience , and experimentation.