Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?
William Edward Woody (woody@alumni.caltech.edu)
Thu, 08 Aug 1996 10:53:50 -0700
In article <3209F217.4B06@megafauna.com>, steve@megafauna.com wrote:
> If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I said he was EITHER ignorant
> OR contemptuous of it. You're saying he was ignorant of it because it
> hadn't been uncovered yet. Fine. Or maybe there was some other reason
> he didn't use it. That's fine too. The point is that *he didn't use
> it*, and that caused him to make some really bad mistakes.
Ignorance is a negatively charged word. I wouldn't say that Aristotle was
ignorant--that suggests that he could have easily uncovered the
experimental method, but for some reason (perhaps due to stupidity)
he did not.
Sorry; 'round the parts where I haunt, "ignorant" suggests a value
judgement, as opposed to the phrase "did not know", which does not.
For example, if I said someone was "ignorant" of QM, that person
may get pissed at my negative suggestion; if I said that person
"did not know" QM, it'd be a completely different issue.
- Bill
Who wonders where the hell the main point of the debate went; we've
been reduced to arguing over whether or not transistor state
diagrams could be completely deduced from Boltzmann's equations.
I mean, if this debate degenerated from arguing over if cultural
or societal points of view permiate science or not to debating over
if Aristotle was ignorant or if one can derive the state diagrams
for a VLSI transistor only using the Boltzmann equations, then
the argument is pretty much over.
--
William Edward Woody | e-mail: woody@alumni.cco.caltech.edu
In Phase Consulting | WWW: http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~woody
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