terminology!

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Apr 11 16:51:00 PDT 2002


ravi wrote:
>
>
>
> there's the other side: those who love to correct less nuanced folks by
> pointing out, usually by interrupting a casual conversation, that a
> whale (or dolphin) is a mammal, not a fish.

It's been 40 years -- but I'm pretty sure Melville used "fish" in reference to whales (he knew the difference of course).

right up there with the
> smart fellows who took particular pleasure in pointing out a few years
> ago, that "jan 1, 2000 is really not the start of the new millenium, you
> know?".

Gould wrote a whole book making fun of the millenium purists.
>
> of course i often wish you folks would stop saying IP for intellectual
> property! IP is the internet protocol! ;-)

I never did it before I started reading posts on pen-l. Blame Michael Perelman.

The persons you describe are boors and bores. I was concerned with those who seriously distort the world by expounding on the basis of amateur science. In some conversations (oral, on maillists, or in social-science or humanities journals) for someone to say, "That can only be decided by someone who _knows_ (physics, biology, etc.) ought to turn the conversation down different channels.

And another example. In a discussion of the Kansas School Board on this list a year or so ago, someone (a) protested accepting the "authority" of biologists on the fact of evolution and (b) argued that (in junior high and high schools yet) they should teach "scientific method." Perhaps Justin could indicate briefly how complex is the problem of saying what the "scientific method" is. Imagine someone thinking that teaching the fact of evolution was authoritarian, while teaching a 10th-grade version of "scientific method" as The Truth was .... what?

Carrol



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