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I agree that this is an odd choice. It hasn't been edited all that well, so the "person" who is "he or she" becomes a "he" in the next sentence. More than that,
by strken 2y ago
I agree that this is an odd choice. It hasn't been edited all that well, so the "person" who is "he or she" becomes a "he" in the next sentence. More than that, there's a clumsy instance of find-replace, "person-is-an-object-study", where the intention of the author was almost certainly "humanity-is-an-object-study".
On a personal level, I think editing old language for political correctness smacks of revisionism, but if such language must be edited, then the editing should at least preserve the meaning of the original.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- another-dave 2y agoIf you do a search for "person-is-an-object-study" it seems to be a phrase from the original author (appearing in other quoted material that hasn't edited "he" to "he or she")
- svat 2y agoThe original journal article (just posted another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139081) had "person-is-an-object-of-study" which makes more sense. And this is also the only version you find quoted if you search in Google Books; all quotes of the other material are probably propagating errors from some earlier transcription error (that precedes the he-or-she).