On 3/11/2012 9:07 AM, John Gilmore wrote:
There is a long intellectual tradition which has it that the production of just one black swan is an unanswerable refutation of the proposition that all swans are white.
I cringe at the word "production" - purportedly (google search came up empty) not too long ago in our nation's history it was common practice to paint sparrows for the purpose of selling them as parakeets.
While I don't recall a proposition on swans, I was reminded of the Pejorative Calculus (Joel Cohen, "On The Nature Of Mathematical Proofs", The Worm-Runner's Digest, Vol. III, No.3, December 1961), where Lemma I (all horses are the same color) is credited to Professor Lee M. Sonneborn, then at U. of Kansas.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
