it's all snow to me
Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:47:13 -0500
Face Inthecrowd wrote:
> If you knew the difference, where would you stop dichotomizing
> the qualities of a plant? WOuld you stop at species, subspecies,
> genera...and the number of cells in the plant? No, you would be satsified
> with the fact that it's a hyacinth, and different from a geranium because of
> the leaf structure, not because of the number of cells.
A pretty good argument for the position that all meaning is
constructed! We could ignore the immediate (and obvious,
unmistakable) differences between a geranium and a hyacinth, etc.
Instead, we could distinguish between them strictly based on the
number of cells they have. Supposing it were practical to count all
the cells in a given plant, we could indeed use cell count to classify
plant life. The meaning of plants would change a little,
accordingly. Plants themselves would change classification as they
grew or were pruned...the world would be a little different, because
we would have cut it up differently.
> Now back to the
> example with the little girl, just because she can't tell the difference
> between a hyacinth and a geranium, does it imply that she doesn't know the
> meaning of a plant?
...just that she doesn't know the meaning of "hyacinth" or
"geranium." To her, they haven't been differentiated. They're the
same thing. They're plants. The (apocryphal?) example of Eskimos and
snow usually comes up. The Eskimo, it is said, has something like 30
different words for "snow." But the average American has a few at
most--"powder" and "slush," perhaps. Mostly though, we just have
snow. We don't notice the differences in snow, and they won't have
any meaning to us until someone points them out.
--
Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu