Vulcanised material

Martin Cohen’s review of If A then B: How the World Discovered Logic (Books, 19 September) suggests that its authors, Michael Shenefelt and Heidi White, want to put logic at “the heart of life”. Since life in the real world has no obvious heart, we might consider the idea of putting logic to work within organisations: colleges, health centres, factories and so on. But how would Aristotle’s syllogisms, Bayes’ theorem or some other well-established branch of the discipline help to improve organisations, each burdened with historical problems and their own particular jargon, culture and mission?

Perhaps organisational members would have to construct and debate a new form of notional logic not yet apparent to either the authors or Cohen.

Neil Richardson
Kirkheaton