Why Do We Park in Driveways and Drive on Parkways?

“This brings us to the relation of logic and reason to the business of human language. The relativist wants to say that there is no relation, and the precisionist wants to say there is a precise and settle relation. But neither fits the situation. The logic of words is not the same as the detached, structural, and contentless logic of math or symbolic logic. Some quirks should help make the problem obvious. Why do ‘He could not get to sleep, not even with a sedative’ and “He could not get to sleep, even with a sedative’ mean the same thing? Why does ‘Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t get well one of these days’ mean that we should not be surprised if he does get well? Why do “I couldn’t care less’ and ‘I could care less’ mean the same thing? Who is in charge of this language?” (The Paideia of God, p. 95).