Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 10/08/2008 04:13 PM: > Glen said (I think it was glen) > > "It's just like folding a piece of paper. Someone hands you a piece of > paper and you fold it into an origami swan. Did you _discover_ the > swan? Or did you invent the swan?" > > And Nick replies ... > > You all know by now how I feel about metaphors. Nick thinks being serious > about metaphors is REALLY IMPORTANT <==rude shouting! > So, when I say what I am about to say, I am not just nit-picking. I hope. > > Isnt the metaphor backwards? Given the uniqueness of the solution, isnt it > more like you had been handed the swan and "discovered" that it was just a > square piece of paper?
Well, it wasn't really a metaphor. It's a simile and/or an analogy. [grin] But, no, it's not backwards any more than it's forwards. The analogy I intended to make was between paper folding and math, not between an origami swan and a solution to a sudoku puzzle. Sorry for not being clear. The idea was that math is just the transformation of one set of sentences into another set of sentences by a particular grammar. This is (weakly) analogous to the transformation of a piece of paper from one shape to another. To make an analogy between the solution to a puzzle and a particular shape, one would have to add more constraints to the shape being sought. One might then be able to determine the uniqueness of a particular shape given those constraints. But such an analogy would be even weaker and wouldn't help explain Wittgenstein's position, I don't think. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
