Chapter 104 【postscript】

Two years ago, I wanted to write a book on sophistry, and started to collect some materials.It just so happened that Tomorrow Publishing House and our department agreed to publish a series of "Guidance of Philosophy for Young People", which included the topic of Sophistry Analysis, so I chose this topic.But it is not easy to actually start writing.One is that it takes a lot of time to sort out and classify a large amount of data; the other is to express abstract logical thinking in the form of storytelling and vivid language, which is quite unfamiliar to me.So with the mentality of trying it out, I collected examples and wrote it. After the first draft was completed, there were more than 100,000 words.In accordance with the publishing house's requirements for the number of words in each manuscript, I deleted a lot, and it became what it is now.

The writing method of the manuscript is: taking the theoretical system of formal logic as the framework, classifying various sophistry examples into the framework, and then mainly using the knowledge of formal logic as a tool to conduct a brief logical analysis of the enumerated sophistry examples, and point out where they are wrong. place. This way of writing is an experiment.How effective it is, and how helpful it will be for the reader to identify and expose sophistical errors, can only be judged by the reader himself.I welcome criticisms and suggestions from experts and readers on the writing and content of this book.

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the comrades of Tomorrow Publishing House. Yu Huitang December 1992 at the Department of Philosophy, Shandong University