Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 09:04:25 -0400
To: Athena Discuss 
Subject: Re: logic-ism

Peter Daniels wrote:
> 
> Name-calling instead of argument? Is that what engineering is?

Cloud. Snow. White.  (For an approximate translation, try
pot. kettle. black)

> There's a slogan in philology: "Every word its own history." Even if it were
> the case that "arithmetos", "geometria", and "astronomia", or whatever words
> you are thinking of, had exactly the same meanings in Greek as in English
> (which they don't), that would indicate nothing about the meaning of "logismos".

I offered a translation, obvious btw, for a single word "logismos",
elsewhere translated as "calculus", with the specific intent of
suggesting what might be the "calculus" to which referred.  From this
exercise, you lambaste me with the obvious remark that the meanings
of words change over the centuries.  You commit an elementary logical
fallacy.  From a particular assertion of your opponent, you ascribe
to him a general statement which he did not make, moreover one which
would clearly be silly for him to make.  Good rhetoric perhaps, but
clearly poor logic.  Now you
say "every word its own history", arguing for the particularity of
every translation.  I agree.  But the irony is lost on you that if
you wish to attack the translation I offered, you should start, and 
end, with the case at hand.  Even I can think of words which, just
in my lifetime, have taken on new meanings.  Equally, it is clear that
arithmetic, geometry and astronomy are words which mean (obviously
abstracting from the *content* of those disciplines) much the same as
they did in the time of the ancients.  (You suggest that they don't,
but I don't believe you, and I challenge you to tell us how their
meanings have changed.)  It seems fair to me also to entertain the
obvious starting hypothesis that logos, and ismos also have not changed
in their core meaning.  Now, if you *know* differently, I'm all ears.

> Why don't you listen to the people who actually know greek? (I'm not one of
> them.)

I'm all ears, and I'm still listening.  Mr. Willett promised via
private email to check the "semantic domain" of logismos, but I
haven't heard further.  And Mr. Fisher tells us that the obvious
hypothesis put forward by me has been discussed before in scholarly
journals, but he does not characterize what consensus may have
emerged from that discussion, giving us only his own opinion, which
I suppose is fair enough.  In any event, Mr. Daniels, the contribution
we get from you is pedantic carping, and not much else.  You make
elementary errors of logic, yet you wish clearly to be bowed down
to as an expert in your field, admonishing me to stick to engineering.
Oh please.  Let's debate substantive issues rather than pedantic
points that are in any case moot.

Regards,

PS. The private email to which you responded was not intended to be
private, rather for posting to the list.  Perhaps you would be good
enough to post it.

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