what is sexual orientation?/ what is a bird ?

[Daniel]

Charles wrote:
"From memory, as Engels, says dialectics recognizes that for all hard and
fast distinctions we eventually find examples that make a contradiction. For
example, if we define a bird as a flying creature, is a chicken a bird ?
But is the definition of a bird useless because chickens can't fly ?  More
from Engels on dialectics, all definitions and hard and fast oppositions
tomorrow."

There has been quite a debate in the biological sciences on just this matter
of words. Is there really that much information conveyed by the word "bird"
or "fish," for example. It's true that some people call a whale a fish. As
you know, it is very unlike most fish.

But, with respect to the larger sense of your comment: is this another way
of saying that the exception proves the rule? Now, I understand this idea in
terms of the archaic meaning of the word PROVE, as a kind of testing. And,
by this definition, the exception disproves the rule. Possibly people
understood this when the phrase was coined.

This is always a very hot issue in music, by the way, since "theorists" are
always telling musicians what they can and cannot do, what is and is not
music, etc. This has been going on for hundreds of years, and for the most
part composers have been happily ignoring it all - with excellent results.

In fact, the "distinctions" you are referring to are words, and just words:
hetero, homo, whatever. It is easy to make a rule out of words. Paraphrasing
the poet, however, "theory is gray, but life is evergreen."

Quincy