The Law of Non-Contradiction Need Not Apply
The Law of Non-Contradiction is Nothing More Than a Guide For Our Own Thinking
It has been with us since the great and wise Greek philosopher Aristotle when he first spoke it and it was penned by his students and in his notebooks in Athens in the 4th-century B.C.E., and it is The Law of Non-Contradiction. According to this law of both life and nature, statements claims, and physical existences simply cannot contradict themselves, lest we actually know absolutely nothing at all. The great presocratic philosopher, Heraclitus, would disagree with Aristotle centuries before him in the 6th-century B.C.E.
Right now, I’m writing this story on a tablet. I could say that the tablet exists, in which case, most people would agree that I’m correct, the tablet that I’m writing on does, in fact, exist, much like Descartes’ classic statement, “Cogito Ergo Sum,” or, “I think, therefore, I am.” I could also say, whilst typing on it, that it does not, in fact, exist, in which case most people would probably think I’m not well. But, what if I were to say that the tablet both exists and does not exist at the exact same time? This might be the challenge that Aristotle would be met with, had Heraclitus been alive when he coined The Law of Non-Contradiction. But why does any of this matter? What does it have to do…
