From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Aug 29 2001 - 12:35:15 MDT
Jerry Mitchell wrote:
>
> > Jerry writes
> >
> > > I wasnt familiar with the term so I did some searching.
> > Heres what I got:
> > >
> > > http://www.xrefer.com/entry/343888
> > >
> > > <snip>
> > > Essentialism, in philosophy, is the doctrine that things
> > have essential
> > > properties, properties without which they would not be the
> > things that they
> > > are. Many philosophers hold that the essence of water is
> > its real essence;
> > > the essence of water is H2O. So the stuff in my glass has
> > an essential
> > > property, a property without which it would not be the
> > stuff that it is; if
> > > the stuff in my glass did not have the property of being
> > H2O, then it would
> > > not be water.
> >
> > That example doesn't seem to work! I can just imagine you going
> > off to planet Y in a very distant galaxy, crashlanding, swimming
> > across a large river, drinking the water, using it to water your
> > plants, and then having the first officer come yelling to you,
> > "Chief! This stuff isn't H20!". You'd then probably conclude
> > that not all water in the universe has the same chemical
> > composition.
>
> I dont follow this, what do you mean the officer runs over and says its not
> H2O? If its a compound similar to water and acts in the same way, it still
> is what it is. What else could it be? If its compound X, then its molecular
> structure might be different. My use of it doesnt change its identity or the
> water's.
What I don't understand is why there persists this notion that physical
laws and even the elements will be discretely different on other
planets. This isn't a new notion to my knowledge, its been around at
least since H Beam Piper wrote his story "Syllabary" (where humans
exploring a martian civilization figure out how to translate martian
from the remains of a martian table of the elements, and the reporter
with them asks them why martians don't have different elements...) but I
would have thought that people would have gotten over such
ludicrousness.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:10:14 MST