And I do know that Michael is pulling my lovely leg with that sortie.
But
I think Michael is being serious when he writes:
"Cheerskep [is] seeking to impose order on the crowd
of words before it's actually needed."
__________________________________________
Sorry about the earlier post. It skipped out in a pre-composed state.
As to the foregoing, I am going to award the point to Cheerskep.
Ordinarily, I am comfortable with the serviceability of a term so long as
there is a recognizable shape to the concept, even though the edges may be
blurred.
However, the term "rule" creates some explicit problems. The use "rules"
of baseball and the "rules" of art are clearly distinct meanings, if not
outright homonyms.
Baseball is a game. Games are arbitrary activities defined by certain
rules.
The rules of art may be taxonomical as in "to be a comedy, there must be a
final unity" or they may be a statement of aesthetic wisdom as in "the
horizon line should never be in the center of the image." But, the rules of
art are not definitional.
If the rules of baseball are violated then the activity is no longer
baseball. If a batter gets five strikes then you have a game that is
similar, but not identical to baseball.
But, it would take a very narrow understanding of the rules of art to
declare that some art-product was not art because the horizon line was in
the center of the image.
Mike Mallory
