Martin Spott wrote: > Andrew Ross wrote: > > Here's a gedanken experiment > > A _what_ ? Is this a valid word in your language ? I'm asking because > it definitely has german roots, the word 'gedanken' .... That's > funny,
The word is, in fact, german. Whether it's valid English or not is an open question -- unlike some languages (*cough* french *cough*), there are no "official" references for the "correct" language. The commercial dictionaries simply track usage. One recent addition to the Webster dictionary is "doh", coined by Homer Simpson. If that is correct English, then I can see nothing wrong with gedanken. The term comes originally from Einstein, I believe (at least it's most often associated with him), and is used to refer to the simply thought experiments that were popular in teaching relativity. You commonly see it used in the context of physics explanations, but nowhere else. :) Andy -- Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com "Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one." - Sting (misquoted) _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
