bovine aggression and menstrual patterns

an underlying theme of the modern yoshon sugya is the interplay of "meta-halacha" and p'sak. in the natural sciences (excluding the effects of quantum mechanics) a phenomenon/state occurs regardless of the nature of the observer. in halacha, the knowledge-state of the observer is integral to the law. as such, halacha is a deterministic system in black-and-white for any scenario a halachik decision maker might find himself. even though the overwhelming majority of halachik deciosion involve some level of uncertainty, "meta-halacha" essentially algorithmically decides based on the types of uncertainty what the law is.

for the most part, humans rationally decide under uncertain conditions by interpolating/inducing the unknown values from those which are already known. in day-to-day non-halachik life this includes everything from our expectation that the sun will rise to our unconscious relying on constant gravity when we walk across a room.

in halacha, these interpolations are formalized as the 13 "middoth she'hatorah nidresheth bahem", chazaka d'meikara, rov, etc. (the principle of 'dayo...' essentially states that we induce rather than interpolate for a kal v'chomer.) what would seem to be a fundamental machloketh about the application of inductions in halacha rather than in life in general arises in masecheth nidda regarding vestoth. the tannaim and amoraim argue about whether the veseth-pattern is biblically recognizable. basing ourselves on the second explanation given by the chazon ish, the machloketh revolves around whether or not the torah treats uncertain patterns like certain ones.

in bava kamma, we find that a shor is muad to do all those things that shvarim normally do under the rubric of shen v'regel; i.e. we extrapolate from the klal of shvarim d'alma to our prat of shor ish in that we expect the baalim to expect that his shor will do these acts and he is fully liable when it damages accordingly. if the shor is yotzeh min haclal, the baalim are considered not fully liable since they were not expected to be aware it would commit these unusual acts. if however the shor demonstrates a consistent, reliable, error-free pattern of at least 3 repetitions, "v'huad bivaalav" the owner is expected to be aware that the animal's nature is to commit these sorts of damages and is fully liable. if the pattern is broken by even 1 violation, the animal returns l'tamutho and rejoins the klal (until it restarts the pattern anew with three sequential iterations.

to be continued...