Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

On 6/26/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> I'm also slightly annoyed by his demand that we ask "what evidence it would
> take to prove our beliefs wrong."  I come from a school of thought that
> prefers the dialectic to the binary--thesis, antithesis, synthesis, rather
> than off, on, zero one, right, wrong.  I guess I run on analog.
Just as a short note - I don't see that he necessarily is binary at
all - nor for that matter that his challenge is. (It's clearly
directed, imo, at religious folk with tautological / closed-loop
belief systems...)

He is making a distinction between tinkering and creativity, or
tinkering and neogenesis perhaps. One could call them both 'creative'
in some sense, but I feel that the distinction is a worthwhile one,
and reflected in how most folk do conlanging - by hearing about how
some language does X, and incoprorating it or a small variation
thereof. This, rather than thinking of entirely new ways of doing X,
or choosing not to do X at all (viz. Kelen), or otherwise going
outside of the usual scope of language.

Which, as I said, is of course a plenty wide scope to start with. But
I'm never one to be content with it just 'cause of that. :-p

 - Sai

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