The Book of Common Fallacies, page 1
BOOKS BY PHILIP WARD
Poetry
Collected Poems, 1960
Seldom Rains, 1967
At the Best of Times, 1968
The Poet and the Microscope, 1969
Maps on the Ceiling, 1970
A House on Fire, 1973
Impostors and their Imitators, 1977
The Keymakers, 1977
Drama
A Musical Breakfast, 1968
Garrity and other Plays, 1970
Pincers, 1973
Television Plays, 1976
Travel
Touring Libya, 3 vols., 1967-9
Tripoli, 1969
Touring Iran, 1970
Sabratha, 1970
Motoring to Nalut, 1970
Touring Cyprus, 1971
The Way to Wadi al-Khail, 1971
Touring Lebanon, 1971
Come with me to Ireland, 1972
The Aeolian Islands, 1973
Bangkok, 1974
Indonesia: a Traveler’s Guide
(as “Darby Greenfield”), 2 vols., 1975-6
Fiction and Essays
The Okefani “Song of Nij Zitru,” 1966
Ambigamus, or The Logic Box, 1967
Apuleius on Trial at Sabratha, 1968
The Quell-Finger Dialogues, 1969
A Lizard and other Distractions, 1969
A Maltese Boyhood, 1976
Librarianship
Simplified Cataloguing Rules (with R. Cave), 1959
A Survey of Libyan Bibliographical Resources, 1964
The Libyan Research Library Catalog, 1970
Planning a National Library Service, 1973
Indonesia: the Development of a National Library
Service, 3 vols., 1976
Literature
Spanish Literary Appreciation, 1969
Indonesian Traditional Poetry, 1975
The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature, 1978
Copyright © 1978, 1980, 2012 by Philip Ward and The Oleander Press
Additional content © 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Originally published as A Dictionary of Common Fallacies by The Oleander Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ward, Philip, 1938-
The book of common fallacies : falsehoods, misconceptions, flawed facts, and half-truths that are ruining your life / Phillip Ward ; with Julia Edwards.
p. cm.
Updated ed. of author’s: Dictionary of common fallacies, c1988.
ISBN 978-1-61608-336-6 (alk. paper)1. Common fallacies--Dictionaries. I. Edwards, Julia. II. Ward, Philip, 1938- Dictionary of common fallacies. III. Title. AZ999.W36 2012 001.9'6--dc23
2012006614
Printed in the United States of America
Editor’s Note to the 2012 Edition
Originally published more than three decades ago, The Book of Common Fallacies sought to educate, entertain, and enlighten at a time when there was no internet, personal computers were extremely rare, and smartphones and internet-connected tablets only existed in the minds of science fiction writers. Nevertheless, Philip Ward managed to pack the original two volumes full of myth-debunking knowledge, much of it still relevant even today in our always-connected, instant-answers-at-our-fingertips world.
In this new single-volume edition, we have left the majority of Ward’s original text and style unchanged, only deleting those entries that were truly outdated (though we retained those entries that were outdated but histotrically interesting). In addition, we have added more than a hundred brand-new entries to address some of the myths, urban legends, and common misconceptions that plague modern society today. You’ll find these entries in gray boxes.
Philip Ward’s Preface to the Original Edition
The Book of Common Fallacies deals not only with the narrow field of purely logical fallacies, but also with a number of important ideas or theories common either now or in the past which have been proved wrong by scientific experiment or observation, or are so intrinsically improbable that their widespread acceptance should be questioned.
The Latin word “fallere” (to escape from, deceive) gave the Vulgar Latin “fallire” (to commit a fault, deceive, fail), and the adjective “fallax” (deceptive), which provided the English adjective fallacious through “fallaciosus.” In classical logic, a fallacy is understood to denote an argument violating the laws of correct demonstration; more generally, it refers to any mistaken statement used in argument, while in common parlance is understood in the even wider sense of a mistaken view which is held by a relatively large number of people in spite of its having been disproved by some form of scientific or logical test.
“For a mind, let us not say exactly ignorant, but shall we say superficial, a work on popular errors might appear quite useless. Why, indeed, he might complain, give the slightest attention, the least emphasis to those daydreams which occupy the brain of the common people, old wives, nurses, and children?” asked Louis Pierre Francois Adolphe, Marquis de Chesnel de la Charbouclais, in mock despair, before contributing 1360 closely printed columns of popular fallacies to Migne’s Troisième et dernière encyclopédie théologique… (Paris, 1856, vol. 20).
Why indeed! As if it were not provocation enough to read newspapers and magazines still containing horoscopes in the 1970s, to see shelf upon shelf of fashionable occult “literature” in otherwise reputable bookshops, fanatic religious sects springing up to make claims of miracle-working and Messianity, extremist political groups seeking converts among the badly educated and the confused, and pseudo-sciences making untestable and incredible claims. However, a dictionary which exhaustively attempted to examine all the various fallacies which have bewitched, beguiled, and bemused the minds of men (and women) would fill an anti-encyclopedia more voluminous than that of the Marquis de Chesnel de la Charbouclais. The intention of the present work is not so ambitious: it merely offers to anatomize some of the popular beliefs which have been shown to be false by those without a vested interest in deceiving the multitude for power, wealth or prestige.
The compiler has taken to heart the three mildly skeptical attitudes proposed by Bertrand Russell in Let the people think (London, 1941, p. 2):
That when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain;
That when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert;
That when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.
“These opinions may seem mild,” wrote Russell, “yet, if accepted, they would absolutely revolutionize human life. The opinions for which people are willing to fight and persecute all belong to one of the three classes which this skepticism condemns. When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction.”
There is no sign that impostors, charlatans, and the plain misguided have diminished in numbers since the Middle Ages. The steep rise in population since the Crusades has been accompanied by the fragmentation of a greatly increased quantity of scientific knowledge, so that fewer and fewer possess a clear understanding of a smaller segment of knowledge and their skepticism about their own “truths,” healthy as it is, leaves ample scope for the less scrupulous to protest the truth of new “religions,” occultist movements varying in integrity and intelligence, pseudo-sciences, and obsessions touted as facts.
Excluded from this catalogue of common fallacies are a majority of the phenomena generally classified as hallucinations and delusions of an individual or of a closely knit group which are evidently not shared by the generality of mankind; hoaxes except insofar as they have led to fallacious conclusions; mere ignorance before major discoveries, inventions, or new patterns of awareness pervade the times; miracles of the various churches which have a vested interest in advertising the power of their magic or the ease with which they can obtain favors from a deity; simple mistakes which are subsequently recognized and rectified; occult beliefs which appeal, however irrationally, to a sector of the consciousness allegedly different from that to which known scientific principles can be seen to apply; religious systems which, through their dogma of faith, claim to be immune from the process of verification which is logically applicable to them as to everything else; supers
The compiler has not fallen into the predictable trap of believing that his is the whole truth, or even most of it (whatever “truth” is). He would be very grateful for suggestions as to ways in which the book might be improved by omission, correction, or addition. Describing an idea as a “common fallacy” does not of course thereby automatically make it so; the intention is merely to reflect the best scholarly opinion currently available and the reader’s indulgence is craved for mistakes and distortions which, regrettably, as the book demonstrates, are all too obviously part of the human condition.
How to Use the Book
A. Readers not looking for any subject in particular may start anywhere and find cause for amusement or concern, depending on their temperament.
B. Readers interested in one particular subject should:
Look up that name or subject in the INDEX. If no reference seems to be present, seek synonyms or heteronyms.
Should there be no reference at all, check the PREFACE for the categories deliberately omitted from the book.
Should there be a reference, consult the TEXT of the dictionary and, if desired, note the source (where given) for verification.
Refer to the BIBLIOGRAPHY for general or specialized studies on fallacies in your field of interest.
A
“Are you clear in your mind in regard to the following (some people would call them platitudes)?
That an idea or belief is not necessarily true or false because your parents, your friends, or you or your children have believed it.
That an idea is not necessarily false because you would hate to believe it, or true because you would like to believe it.
That an idea is not necessarily true or false because it is new, or because it is old.
That asserting a statement an infinity of times does not in itself make that statement true.
That the repeated denial of the existence of a thing does not dispose of its existence.”
—ABEL J. JONES, In search of truth (London, 1945)
“The age of miracles is past; the age of miracles is forever here.”
—THOMAS CARLYLE
ABSINTHE IS A HALLUCINOGEN
Absinthe, to most people, is fascinating and desirable, both for its literary and cultural prevalence, as well as for the fact that it is said to possess hallucinogenic properties. However, this isn’t necessarily true. Absinthe as a hallucinogenic drug that drives people to insanity has been greatly exaggerated, while its dangers related to high alcohol content have gone, by and large, under the radar.
Extracts of one of absinthe’s most notable ingredients, worm-wood, were said to have been used as medical remedies as far back in time as the ancient Egyptian period (for gastrointestinal worms). Apparently, wormwood oil in itself is used as an herbal cure for loss of appetite, liver and gallbladder problems, and dyspeptic disorders.
The rise of absinthe as an alcoholic beverage appeared and took off in the late 19th century in Europe. The beverage was “invented” by a doctor in Switzerland, whose recipe was subsequently obtained by Henri-Louis Pernod, who began the commercial production of absinthe in 1797 and soon after brought it to the French market.
Due to an increased public interest, advertising, and a temporary decrease in red wine production due to a vine-pest, Pernod increased absinthe production from 16 liters per day to 125,000 liters in the span of 100 years. Not to mention, annual capita per consumption of absinthe in France increased a whopping fifteenfold in a mere thirty-eight years (between 1875 and 1913). Pure alcohol consumption in France was so high that if the product was spread evenly among the population, each French citizen would have been consuming 60 liters (that’s almost 16 U.S. gallons) per year. In other words, if you lived in France in this time period, it would be standard practice for you to singlehandedly finish a personal gallon of straight liquor every three weeks or so.
Not surprisingly, representatives from a number of different professional backgrounds (the church, the medical field, winegrowers… etc.) took action around the same period to ban alcohol consumption. Medical studies began to provide proof that absinthe caused mental and other illness (insanity). The movements to ban alcohol were ironically backed by winegrowers and the wine industry in order to “stop alcoholism” but obviously just to eliminate the domination of absinthe in the marketplace.
Although the French government ignored the protests at first, anti-alcohol campaigns became widespread through educational programs and public awareness demonstrations, so a bill was passed in 1908. But once again, instead of banning alcohol because of its growing dangers to human health that everyone was so concerned about, the alcohol content in absinthe was raised, the logic being that if absinthe makers had to use more pure alcohol, there would be less potential for other more “artificial” ingredients to be added, and the strength of the pure alcohol would eliminate other negative additives.
Finally, not public health concerns but rather the weakening strength of the French military army due to absinthe consumption triggered the government to ban absinthe altogether in 1915. A bunch of other countries, including the United States, had already banned the drink. Not shockingly, the French public health did not improve much after this action, as they simply just switched over to other alcoholic drinks.
Before the ban on absinthe, the beverage was originally categorized officially as any drink that contained compounds taken from wormwood. Thujone was the main compound taken from wormwood and put in absinthe. This compound was said by some to be the cause for the hallucinogenic properties of absinthe back in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Thujone, not alcoholism and mental instability, was blamed for driving Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh to insanity and Edgar Allen Poe to death. Oscar Wilde drank absinthe and so therefore was clearly delusional. “We lost another great one to absinthism,” fine people would lament.
However, there is still really no concrete evidence that proves thujone, or even wormwood in general, leads to hallucination. In popular culture, absinthe was extremely demonized. Doctors attributed absinthe specifically as the cause of everything from auditory and visual hallucinations and loss of consciousness to seizures and cancer. At the First International Eugenics Conference, the differences were laid out plain and clear between the alcoholic and the “absinthe-oholic.” For the latter, hallucinations were said to be more extreme, terrifying, sudden in onset, and often provoking serious and dangerous acts of violence. Sounds a little like the typical raging alcoholic symptoms, if you ask us.
Furthermore, between 1867 and 1912 in Paris, 16,532 people were treated for alcoholic intoxication. Of them, 70 percent were diagnosed as chronic alcoholics, while only 1 percent were reported to have cases of “absinthism.”
Absinthe is now allowed again in some European countries and the United States. It is basically made the same way with the same herbal ingredients, but there are limits in place on how much thujone can be included. Kids order absinthe online or smuggle it back from their family trip abroad in Listerine bottles in the hopes of drinking it and seeing all kinds of green fairies and psychedelic visuals as if they were tripping on LSD. However, it is not at all surprising that no one has reported hallucinatory effects of absinthe since it has been recirculated on the market. Although there is less thujone than previously, which is the factor that most young thrill seekers blame their nonexistent psychedelic trips on, people continue to get significantly more intoxicated more rapidly from drinking absinthe. This is probably because thujone alone cannot be consumed with the inclusion of copious amounts of ethyl alcohol as well.
In conclusion, drinking tons of ethyl alcohol, with or without thujone, is an obvious enough explanation for why people tended to go crazy, experience bodily dysfunctions, and remember seeing things that were never there.
Sources: BioMed Central: Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, “Absinthism: a Fictitious 19th Century Syndrome with Present Impact,” Stephan A Padosch, Dirk W Lachenmeier, Lars U Kroner, 2006; Science News, “Toxin in Absinthe Makes Neurons Run Wild,” Corinna Wu, 2000.
