POETRY

Dr. Zadeh, who has just received the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, is an old friend and wonderful soul who for years sent me his newest published papers related to fuzzy logic.

Strolling on a foggy night,
Talking to Zadeh, a witty scientist,
I discovered how fuzzy our minds are.
When I told him that my lover wore red silk
He asked me: 'What shade of red?'
I said: 'Well, it was not maroon or magenta or pink,
But a sexy red just a little lighter than the stoplight
That freezes people in their tracks.'
Zadeh insisted that I 'Be precise!'
A little frustrated, I demanded, 'But how?'
'By specifying the frequency  of the light," he said.
Timidly, I asked him: 'Even if I had the frequency for you,
Could you really visualize the exact hue?'
'Only if I used a spectral wheel,' he grinned, suggesting
That the next time we met I should bring a scale and tape
To measure words like heavy and short, too.
He smiled the most teasingly fuzzy smile.

"We said goodnight but a pesky question stayed with me:
How can words, paintings, music describe anything precisely?
One can visualize a dove, its meaning rather crisp and clear.
But words like love, truth, beauty, happiness, sadness, joy,
Do not project meanings well defined.
These are intoxicated words—fuzzy, fuzzy words,
Meandering human consciousness like crazy hordes,
Making communication as hazardous
As swimming along shark-infested shores.
Even in the austere world of math and logic
Incompleteness, randomness, and fuzziness are rife.
Vagueness permeates everything—even love.

"Reality is infinite and eternal,
But language is finite and temporal.

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When the troubled mind complains,
Language shouts back to the mind:
'You created me fuzzy, even inadequate,
And now you complain that I am inadequate?
You remind me of God who creates lemons
But commands them to be persimmons!'

"Even if we are fuzzy from head to toe,
We are still condemned to communicate from head to toe.
So we imprecisely, though efficiently, say what we want to say
And others imprecisely, though efficiently, understand what we say.
Thus this poem of mine is more or less fuzzy.
And more or less fuzzy is fuzzy, too."