Re: OT: art and language and THE DAVINCI CODE

En réponse à John Cowan :


>Can he explain quantum mechanics over dinner, or why a particular research
>idea is promising whereas another is obviously going to lead nowhere?
>Probably not.
If he cannot explain quantum mechanics over dinner, then he is not a
scientist (or one who doesn't know anything about quantum mechanics. Not
impossible, but then the example lose all strength :)) ). Why, even I, a
junior scientist, have managed to explain quantum mechanics over dinner to
a completely ascientific person. As for the second example, I doubt any
scientist is able to make the difference between a promising and a
non-promising research until the promising one does begin to show its
results and the non-promising one has stalled for more than a few years.
And then it's easy to explain the difference. A person can have a "gut
feeling" about a research, but this is purely instinctive and very prone to
errors. After all, it's in the nature of researching the unknown that we
don't know what we are going to find, or whether we're going to find anything.

>   Your kind of science (< "scientia") is just as subtle as his.
I dare say that hard sciences are in many ways *less* subtle than "soft"
ones. It's not that difficult to vulgarise physics, but I've yet to find
someone who has managed to vulgarise musicology or creative writing without
betraying them.

In any case, this is not meant to weaken Sally's point. On the contrary, I
feel it strengthens it.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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