“The art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality… Let us now go on to discuss how many kinds there are of sophistical arguments, and how many in number are the elements of which this faculty is composed, and how many branches there happen to be of this inquiry, and the other factors that contribute to this art.” (Aristotle)

In other words, Aristotle is seeking to create an ontology, a formal systematic description of the art of sophistry- a table of contents on the subject. But Aristotle knew little of mathematics especially by today’s standards. At the same time he seems to have a great intuitional sense of many mathematical topics such as fractal geometry, formal systems, decision theory, game theory etc.

One of the main trends in twentieth century mathematics has been the coming together of mathematics and logic as seen in the works of Russell and Whitehead (Principia Mathematica), Goedel (undecidability), Von Neumann (game theory), Turing (artificial intelligence), Bayes (decision theory), Thom (catastrophe and bifurcation theory), Mandelbrot (Fractal geometry) etc. Results in other areas of science such as Physics and chemistry are relevant also such as: quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Decision-making has been the focus of a great deal of scientific research, yet the jargon of our legal system remains fundamentally unchanged during this period. Most lawyers and judges nowadays go into their profession in the first place as direct result of their dislike or ineptitude in mathematics, yet mathematics in the form of decision theory as at least one example, should be as central to the legal profession as mathematics is to engineers.

This blog then has the purpose, in the spirit of Aristotle, of reducing the role of intuition and vagueness (intentional and unintentional) in the courtroom environment, and optimizing the level of justice delivered therein. Aristotle himself made an attempt to catalogue his "Sophistical Refutations". In this spirit this blog will attempt to create a similar list in light of modern mathematical and logical theory.