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In my (vane) attempt at reading Melville's Moby Dick I was struck at some point (Chapter 32: Cetology) by the following sentence, floating in a stormy and rathe
by Udik 12y ago
In my (vane) attempt at reading Melville's Moby Dick I was struck at some point (Chapter 32: Cetology) by the following sentence, floating in a stormy and rather muddy sea of ramblings and jokes:
"Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty."
- falsedan 12y agoyou mean, vain[1] attempt. [1] http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/vain.html http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/vain.html
- yb66 12y agoIt's definitely as probable that it was an attempt to impress as it was futile :) And yes, I know I'm hellbanned, but hellbanning is fucking stupid so it's hardly more stupid to keep posting from a hellbanned account. I'm just going with the rational of the site ;-)
- Udik 12y agoOops. Embarassing, especially since I boasted a few days ago of never misspelling an English word :) Thanks!
- Udik 12y agoAnd, I did it again :)
- pavpanchekha 12y agoI don't think this is quite analogous. For one, first-order arithmetic doesn't seem a uniquely human invention. Instead, it seems like it is mathematically universal in a certain way—induction is a thing that appears across all sorts of different logics, and is usually tied to a marked increase in logic strength. And, there are plenty of logics that are complete, like presberger arithmetic; these logics just happen to be weaker than first-order arithmetic.