Slow logic

I’m all for taking things slowly. But this is getting ridiculous.

But then, despite my all best resolutions, the lead up to the General Election here and its aftermath have all been quite ridiculously distracting. No wonder that the writing for the second edition of my intro logic text has been going corresponding slowly. Though in some ways the slowness has been rather enjoyable: for it gives me space to I feel I am still learning and getting clearer about various issues as I go along.

I suppose you might think that, having taught the stuff for forty years, I really would have achieved settled views by now on the logical basics and on how best to expound them. But you know how it is: in the hurly burly of teaching, especially when your mind is focused on more challenging courses, you let yourself get away with conventional almost-truths, or park concerns for when you have time to return to think harder about them. And then somehow another teaching year comes round before you have had the time to settle down to do the re-thinking, and the extensive re-writing of overheads, that you promised yourself. You tinker and satisfice for another year. Well, retirement with no more teaching duties brings me the time to try to do better. We’ll have to see whether the time is being well-spent!

But just today, I got CUP’s happy approval of my suggested cover image for the second edition. You’ll have to wait to find out what I’ve chosen: I’ll only say that it’s an abstract painting by a well-known early-twentieth century artist. I now merely have to get the following four hundred pages into good enough shape not to disgrace the cover …