rofessor Hamblin on Syllogism

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

Periodically, the Baron’s chief advisor would meet with the Lilliland Castle staff to talk about his favorite topic, syllogism: the art of deductive reasoning.

Since Professor Hamblin had been a professor at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England, the meeting sounded very professional. Lady Angela of Alpine Castle, the Baron’s fiancée, often sat in on some of the Professor’s meetings. Afterwards, she would mention that the Professor’s meeting sounded like university lectures and the information being talked about was going over the audiences’ heads.

Professor Hamblin was trying to instill the importance of everyone’s job in the castle working together with everyone else’s position to function as a united body of dedicated workers. Everyone needed to know exactly how each job and position fit together with everyone else’s to have a smooth running organization.

Sometimes, even when the Professor looked at his audience and saw that they did not seem to understand the point of the meeting, the Professor would add the expression, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Then they seemed to get the picture. If one worker lets down in doing his work, then the quality of the entire work force is diminished.

Professor Hamblin also related syllogism in an organization to everyone having the proper attitude toward his position. If everyone on the staff was sincere in his work, had the proper attitude and understood the syllogistic approach to problem solving, then the resulting teamwork produced a very accomplished staff everyone could admire and respect.

Lady Angela often asked the Professor to give the same lecture to the member of her staff. She believed that syllogism as deductive reasoning worked. Workers were then able to reach the answers to a particular problem more clearly when they had insight into the methodology used in seeking the solution.