Re: 'together vs. to gather'

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> The "action of collecting": what is it else than
> putting several things together ? That there will be
> any result or not does not change the meaning of the
> concept. To start collecting and get nothing just
> means than you started the activity of collecting
> several things but it somehow failed. You don't start
> gathering, or collecting, with the aim of getting
> nothing, neither just one item.
One of my less sane pastimes is putting my finger into little droplets of war
and seeing how much of whatever surface they're on I can make wet with it.
Now, I might use the verb "to disperse" for this - but I don't expect you to
say that the actual object(s) of my action are the individual water molecules,
since the relevant charateristics - surfaces tension, "wetness" - do not apply
to individual molecules but only masses thereof.

Another thing you can do when you're sufficiently bored is dragging water
droplets with you finger into contact with one another, making bigger droplets
(droplots? :) ). This'd be the example for "to gather".

                                                       Andreas