As "Mr. Logic," the talk-show host of KSCO's "Thinking Machine," I have the opportunity to discuss many of the new topics in science and technology. But the one topic that my listeners have the greatest amount of trouble comprehending is not the Big Bang theory, nor is it the idea of multi-dimensional universes. Surprisingly enough, the concept that gives them the most trouble is the simple notion of shades of gray! Perhaps because the idea is so simple, it's difficult to extrapolate it past the obvious.

While the new science of fuzzy logic is gaining acceptance in the field of engineering, the American public at large is (for the most part) completely ignorant about it. And even those who have heard the term "fuzzy logic" think that it merely refers to nothing more than some new branch of "electronics."

I discovered the concept of fuzzy logic, not by reading about it, but by thinking about it on my own. Several years ago I had not yet even heard the term "fuzzy logic." But instead I had been discussing on my radio show a concept that I had come up with a long time ago -- a way of thinking which I urged my listeners to avoid. I referred to this undesirable way of thinking as "all-or-nothing"-ism, a mind-set that I would later discover represented a form of Aristotelianism.

Because my paradigm of a gray reality was not fostered by the seeds of "mainstream" fuzzy logic and its engineering-only applications, I have been able to extrapolate the concept of "fuzzy" further into the philosophies of everyday life than most of the other authors in the field have done to date. Hopefully this fresh approach to the subject will inspire an even better understanding of our perceptions of reality.

I have decided (with great trepidation) to divide this book into two "parts" (even though such an Aristotelian partitioning is contrary to the very theme of the book!). But then even the sub-partitioning of a book into "chapters" is a convention which most authors utilize for the sake of convenience to their readers.

The first part of the book deals with the more conventional aspects of fuzzy logic (with a few new twists of my own), while the second part discusses the more revolutionary ideas that result when the fuzzy paradigm is applied to societal issues. Many of these ideas are going to strike some readers as being rather strange or foreign, and the concepts will definitely not be in accord with how most Americans have been brought up to think.

Hundreds of years ago mankind had been brought up to think that the earth was the center of the universe. (They looked up at the sky and saw that the entire universe revolved around the earth once every 24 hours!) And then a guy named Galileo pointed a telescope at the planet Jupiter one evening and saw four tiny pin-points of light revolving very slowly around something other than the earth.

I've often wondered, if I had been alive in those days and if I were to have looked through that telescope, would those four insignificantly tiny pin-points of light have been enough evidence to convince me that the earth was not at the center of the universe? How would I have reacted to such a crack-pot notion that was contrary to the currently accepted views of the day?

Now it's your chance to look through the telescope. Now it's your turn to see reality as it really is. What will you do?