[Wittrs] Re: Does pain have a referent?
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:14:49 -0700
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:59 AM, jrstern <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>>
>> If you don't believe nominalism provides a suitable model for public
>> life, then private life is easier to rescue from that dogma's sorry
>> clutches (would be my take, using nominalism in a coherent namespace
>> of my own invention that holds up Python as high class nominalist
>> logic that deserves our respect -- but then doesn't masquerade as a
>> "human grammar" (it's machine language, more Turing than
>> Shakespeare)).
>
> Sure, you, and the Babylonians and Arabs who invented algebra, and Descartes
> who invented modern usage of variables, and Church and lambda binding, and
> Epicurus and his skepticism of essentials, and John Backus and Fortran, and
> Grace Hopper and Cobol, and John McCarthy and symbolic processing, and a few
> dozen others we could toss in there.
>
> Josh
>
I didn't understand the above except that it put me in illustrious
company, which I liked.
I credit Grace Hopper (USN, Admiral of some type) with the whole idea
of a compiler, more than just COBOL, much as I credit Ada (Byron) for
inventing the idea of a programmable device, drawing from sources (not
just from Babbage).
Women rule in computer science, as I've often noted on math-thinking-l.
Kirby
WEB VIEW: http://tinyurl.com/ku7ga4
TODAY: http://alturl.com/whcf
3 DAYS: http://alturl.com/d9vz
1 WEEK: http://alturl.com/yeza
GOOGLE: http://groups.google.com/group/Wittrs
YAHOO: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/
FREELIST: //www.freelists.org/archive/wittrs/09-2009
Other related posts:
