Let us suppose a beat-boxer, one of those gifted with the skill to reproduce a whole orchestra of percussive instruments using only his voice, and let us have him put in charge of a large and complicated steam-driven machine of the sort which has something fed in at one end, processes it, and puts the … Continue reading The Beat-Boxer and the Steam Machine: a paradigm of primitive speech
Tag: philosophy
reflections in a philosophical strain
Switching sides: a confession
When I was younger - more than quarter of a century younger - I did something that I now think was wrong, though I didn’t at the time. I was asked to cover someone’s Higher English evening class and found that they were studying Wordsworth’s poem that begins ‘Up! up! my friend, and quit your … Continue reading Switching sides: a confession
Why is a raven like a writing desk? The power of abstraction.
Abstraction is an interesting notion. The word itself is derived from the Latin preposition ‘ab’ meaning ‘from’ or ‘away from’ combined with the verb ‘trahere’ ‘to pull or draw’ (which also gives us our word ‘tractor’) - thus it means, literally, ‘to pull or drag away from’ so that it conveys the sense of separation, … Continue reading Why is a raven like a writing desk? The power of abstraction.
COMPLEAT TROWZER 