Need for Contradictions

Logic does not immediately deal with the eradication of contradictions, but first with formal requirements for the production and recognition of contradictions.

Thereby, there are always preliminary performances to be made, which seligize sense references and condense them to a contradiction; but only if these preliminary performances are unified to a form, logical conditioning can take effect, above all the conditioning by a general rule of avoiding contradictions. The form of the contradiction results only from the totality of its uses in logic. It need not be assumed historically invariant, but it can be thought that it varies with the kind of its social use.

The presupposition is that the need for contradictions varies with social changes and that therefore, after the system of modern society was established around 1800, classical logic is no longer sufficient.

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LUHMANN, Niklas, 1991. Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. 4. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 666. ISBN 978-3-518-28266-3, p. 496 and 496N9

Here research on the sociology of knowledge of logic can find clues suggested by W. Baldamus, Zur Soziologie der formalen Logik, in: Nico Stehr/Volker Meja (eds.), Wissenssoziologie, Sonderheft 22 der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Opladen 1981, pp. 464-477.