Connections With Logical Principles
The logical roots of the Holmes remark speak to the principle of excluded middle. That indicates the importance to case analysis of logical disjunction: stringing together propositions with the logical connective "or". Medical diagnosis can indeed follow the Holmes pattern, with a patient's symptom possibly caused by a number of conditions: the patient suffers from A or B or ... or illness I; see differential diagnosis. Deductive logic is applied to reducing the number of cases; see case-based reasoning.
A canonical statement of case analysis in the sentential calculus is:
"If a statement P implies a statement Q, and a statement R also implies Q, and either P or R is true, then Q must be true."
Read more about this topic: Case Analysis
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“A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.”
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“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.”
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