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John Barth, “The End of the Road”
Cleveland Stadium

— Now, is there any ultimate reason why the Cleveland Stadium shouldn’t seat fifty-seven thousand, four hundred eighty-eight people?

— None that I can think of, — I grinned.

— Don’t pretend to be amused. Of course there’s not. Is there any reason why it shouldn’t seat eighty-eight thousand, four hundred seventy-five people?

— No, sir.

— Indeed not. Then as far as Reason is concerned its seating capacity could be almost anything. Logic will never give you the answer to my question. Only Knowledge of the World will answer it. There’s no ultimate reason at all why the Cleveland Stadium should seat exactly seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred people, but it happens that it does. There’s no lreason in the long run why Italy shouldn’t be shaped like a sausage instead of a boot, but that doesn’t happen to be the case. The world is everything that is the case, and what the case is is not a matter of logic. If you don’t simply know how many people can sit in the Cleveland Municipal Stadium, you have no real reason for choosing one number over another, assuming you can make a choice at all — do you understand? But if you have some Knowledge of the World you may be able to say, “Seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred”, just like that. No choice is involved.

logic