From the “Doctrine of Science”1 to the Logic of Culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT Modern logical concepts—essences, phenomena, causality, and so forth—border on medieval concepts, including the concept of man’s and, ultimately, God’s involvement in real objects. According to Bibler, every logic is dia-logic (two or more logics), but this is only realized in the late twentieth century thanks to, among others, the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, which demonstrated the dialogic nature of artworks and their non-sublatability in culture. The works of Sophocles do not lose their significance in Shakespeare’s time, nor do Shakespeare’s during Tolstoy’s time: Their characters live forever, and their ideas are reproduced in debate/dialogue with other characters’ ideas. Bibler similarly postulated the formation of a new logic as a logic of culture that differed from the Hegelian mono-logical logic of science. Here, Bibler defines modern-era logic as science oriented—that is, as a doctrine of science—and he describes the need for transforming it into a logic of culture, providing a definition of paradox where the complete unfolding of a situation leads to its own destruction.