Dec 11, 2009 07:29 PM
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(Updated Jan 01, 2010 07:18 PM)
In this debut novel of Mr. Raj Kamal Jha, the protagonist starts with a very interesting sentence that might give many sleepless nights to a logical scientist – “I will tell you happy stories and** I will tell you sad stories*”. If one looks at this sentence from the view point of a strict logician and makes the analysis, one finds a situation like{(story*= happy*) &**(story*= sad*)}. According to the mathematical set theory, these are two are mutually exclusive sets and the operator ‘&**’ applied between these two sets means an intersection. And obviously the intersection of two mutually exclusive sets must result into a null set or empty set. It means, if Mr. Jha had truly been using the Boolean logic, the result would have been empty and the book would have certainly gone unwritten.
Then, the question is, can such a huge effort of writing a long novel be devoted to the EMPTY SET of mathematical set theory?
The answer is certainly a big NO.
But then, one must find a mathematical answer that provides a scope for the book to exist.
As most human thinking is vague or imprecise in nature, the Boolean logic cannot adequately emulate the thinking process. In 1960s, **Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh**, ** **at the** **University of California, USA, proposed a new mathematical way of looking at the intrinsic vagueness of the natural human language. He called this approach “Fuzzy Logic**”. In other words, the Fuzzy logic, as propounded by Prof. Zadeh, can support such paradoxes as described by the protagonist and can permit a story to be happy and sad at the same time. And even though Mr. Jha is neither aware of Boolean logic nor of Fuzzy logic, he admits later “and remember my child, your truth lies somewhere else*”. Thus, Mr. Jha has himself talked of the Fuzzy logic, albeit unknowingly, and has provided a space for the novel to exist.
