[lit-ideas] Scientists Know Best?
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 18:13:03 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 8/22/2014 5:40:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The suggestion that there is something otiose about "better" in the phrase
"you should know better" is surely mistaken, as the phrase is a
contraction of "you should know better than that" and "you should know better
than
that" is not synonymous with "you should know" simpliciter.
I wonder about stuff like
i. Scientists know best.
and what people like Popper would or could or might or should or ought to
say about it.
As opposed to 'better' (followed by "than" -- as McEvoy writes above),
'best' calls for a different expansion ("if you happen to see the best girl in
the world") since 'best than' sounds ungrammatical (I'm not sure whether
what's grammatically unsound is logically unsound, too.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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