One of the reasons I rarely post to this list is that many people here seem trapped in an eternal series of meaningless essentialistic debates. Nothing objective or conclusive ever comes from essentialistic arguments where people bicker over what some word or concept "really means".
Science used to suffer from this. About 120 years ago, biologists used to argue about the meaning of "life". Were viruses alive? Were sperm alive? What they could or could not consider "alive" was really important to the old-school biologists, and there was endless debate between them. (People on both sides of the abortion issue still make these kinds of empty arguments.) But today, biologists don't care what "life" means. They accept an arbitrary definition for "life" because they're scientists, and as scientists they realize that the definitions we use do not define reality. Definitions of words and concepts are merely tools for describing things to one another in a consistent manner. Real truth stems from examining the relationships between observable phenomena, by using operational definitions rather than essentialistic ones. Anything less than this is semantics. Anna --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---