We are considering the famous repartee by Ethel Agnes Zimmerman
(stage-named Merman: she dropped the Agnes and rather than drop the Zimmerman
--
Timberman in German -- she shortened it to "-Merman"; later still she dropped
the initial hyphen as 'otiose'):
"Two wrongs make a right".
The idea is mathematical
- - a = a
In a message dated 7/28/2015 10:30:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
I've heard Ethel Merman sing twice and it's still not right.
Indeed, I grant her voice and belting style (as it is called) is not
everybody's cup (figuratively) of tea. Geary plays on what Germans (including
Popper -- "Broadly, Austrians are Germans") call 'philosophy of right'.
Indeed, 'richtig', in German seems to have two antonyms: 'wrong' and 'left'.
Is
this mathematical? (Cf. the essay in Riemannian geometry, 'The right and the
left in non-Euclideian spaces').
The implicature in Geary's repartee seems to be that while two wrongs don't
make a right (well, he SAYS that), three lefts do, i.e. make a right.
This can be proved not mathematically, but 'automobilistically', as
Marinetti used to say ("a car is more beautiful than the Greek Victory of
Samotracia"):
If you turn to the left, and then to again to the left, and then, for a
third time, to the left, indeed, you are heading in the RIGHT direction*.
Geary adds the proviso, "depending, of course, on whether that's where you
wanted to go, as the Cheshire Cat might add.
The reference is Carrollian:
`Cheshire Puss,' Alice Liddell began, rather timidly, as she did not at
all know whether the cat would like the name, 'Cheshire _puss_': however, the
Chesire puss only grinned a little wider. `Come, the puss's pleased so
far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I
ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the puss.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice Liddell-Hargreaves
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the puss.
`--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice Liddell-Hargreaves added as an
explicature.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the puss, `if you only walk long
enough.'
Alice Liddell-Hargreaves felt (in an anti-Popperian manoeuvre) that this
could not be denied.
According to Popper (this he learned from W. Bartley, III), "everything can
be denied" -- which is distinct from 'anything may be denied.' Vide:
Conjectures and Refutations.
Cheers,
Speranza
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