Fuzzy logic is not logic that is fuzzy, but logic that describes and tames fuzziness. It is based on the concept that all things are a matter of degree.

Lofti Zadeh, Director, Computer Science Division, University of California, US, didn’t know, at one time, much about subways. But, he knew the secret of trains, which purred through the outskirts of Sendai, Japan, halting with uncanny precision, and saving ten per cent of the average fuel cost.

Zadeh obviously knew that the trains were working on a set of maxims that made up ‘fuzzy logic.’ This was, indeed, the magic word he himself had ‘coined,’ in the mid-1960s, at a time when conventional logic was the rule, dividing as it did the world into yes and no, and black and white.

Zadeh’s proposition was classically different: the entire world is in shades of grey, he suggested. It was something that, he also argued, could make computers ‘think’ like people. Curiously, the American academic community wasn’t impressed. It ridiculed the concept per se, and called fuzzy logic ‘futuristic fantasy.’ Not so the Japanese, who saw the logic of fuzzy logic -- this was reason enough why companies like Matsushita and Sony began selling it back to the land of its origin.

Today, fuzzy logic is being widely incorporated as computer technology and in a host of other engineering and scientific gizmos, including household gadgets -- making them almost as ‘smart’ as their owners.

Do we not use fuzzy logic to make housework easy? You toss your laundry into the washing machine and push a button -- the machine does the rest. There is actually no fuss, no frill, no measuring the detergent, or choosing a wash temperature, or selecting the cycle. Also, think about using a microwave oven that watches over meals set to cook with more sensitivity than a human being! In Japan, this has been used for a while. Motivation enough why the technology is fast catching up, what with products applying fuzzy logic now readily available, in many markets.

Fuzzy logic is not logic that is fuzzy, but logic that describes and tames fuzziness. It is based on the concept that all things are a matter of degree. As a matter of fact, fuzziness underscores, perhaps, the most famous philosophical scheme ever devised: Plato’s theory of ideals. The philosopher was aware of degrees of truth everywhere, and he often reconciled from them. For Plato, to use a simile, no chair was perfect; it was only a chair to a certain degree. Nothing in the world is perfect. Everything, the great man said, comes with similar grades of imperfection.

It is true that Plato’s ideals were not mere intellectual gems over practical sense. They had deep, primary effects. For example, they were able to circumvent or even overcome the popular notion of essentialism -- one of the foremost obstacles to the theory of evolution. Though Plato did, at first, confuse all partial contradictions with the sum total, while viewing the harmony between objects as conflict between tall and short, he did see the ‘light’ and re-invent his philosophy. It was, of course, much later that he eliminated ‘fuzziness’ from existence and altered his perception of the world.

This is not all. Closer home, Hinduism, or India’s rich tradition of logic, still holds to the idea that the physical world is maya, or illusion. Likewise, Buddhism has distinctly fuzzy elements. The Buddha was truly the world’s first fuzzy theorist. His sayings turn the Law of Contradictions completely inside out.

Back to Zadeh. Complex systems, Zadeh evidences, trigger the idea of fuzzy sets. A chair, according to him, distils an array of objects into one central notion. Furniture, he adds, summarises it even more broadly, as much as words, which define every core concept that may have blurred bounds. He also explains that language is “a system for assigning atomic and composite labels, words, phrases, and sentences,” to fuzzy sets. Language is, quite simply, a vast shorthand -- the outstanding instance of our ability to summarise.

Zadeh reckons that fuzzy logic could handle several complexities in a similar way. To illustrate a simple example: when members in a class grow, for instance, they eventually exceed human comprehension. When this happens, the brain subsequently responds by summarising the class into chunks, labelled with words. As Bart Kosko, another fuzzy scholar, puts it so logically: “What makes society turn is science, and the language of science is maths, and the structure of maths is logic, and the bedrock of logic is Aristotle, and that’s what goes out with fuzzy.”

How far can fuzzy logic go, you may, therefore, well ask. According to Kosko, it has lead, or will lead, to futuristic scientific miracles. These include:

• Vast expert decision-makers, who will theoretically be able to refine the wisdom of every document ever written
• Smart cars with sonar devices that pump the brakes if the car ahead stops too quickly. With a fuzzy navigator, a computerised map, and emitters and receivers in the asphalt/concrete roads, such vehicles could also drive themselves
• Sex robots with a human-like repertoire of behaviour
• Computers that understand and respond to normal human language
• Machines that write prize-winning novels and screenplays in a selected style, such as Ernest Hemingway’s
• Molecule-sized soldiers of health -- for example, nano-technology -- that will roam the bloodstream, killing cancer cells and slowing down the aging process.

You get the point. If information can lead to rapid progress, there’s no reason why fuzzy systems, or feasible fuzzy devices, should not be more commonplace. To pick some examples -- insulin pumps, incubators for premature infants, devices to induce labour by smoothening the flow of anaesthetics and drugs to the expectant mother, pool chlorinators, throttle controllers for racing powerboats to keep their bows from pitching out of the water, aquarium management systems, heart pacemakers, light dimmers, liquid cooling systems for computer workstations, and a host of other applications. The list is endless.

To quote technologists Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger, authors of Fuzzy Logic, a classy book, for what will make fuzzy logic get even bigger: “It [fuzzy logic] forsakes not precision, but pointless precision. It abandons an either or hairline that never existed, and brightens technology at the cost of a tiny blur. It is neither a ‘dream’ like artificial intelligence, nor a dead-end, a little trick for washers and cameras. It is here today, and no matter what the brand name on the label, it will probably be here tomorrow.”

That's fuzzy logic proved!