Re: OT: art and language and THE DAVINCI CODE

En réponse à John Cowan :


>"Explain" was a poorly chosen word.  I can do that too, but I can't prepare
>someone to tell the difference between valid work and rubbish, which is
>what Sally is lamenting she can't do either.
In science, it's easy to do that afterwards, that's to say to compare
completed valid work and "completed" rubbish. But I still claim (and with
experience) that it's impossible to make such a comparison before the works
are close to completion. The best you can do, sometimes, is to guess
whether a person is fit for the research or not, but you cannot judge
whether a research itself will give results or not before it gave results
or arrived at a dead-end.


>If you don't learn this skill, at least in this country, you will have a
>big problem getting grants.
Don't get me started on all the things scientists have to do to get grants
for their research. Believe me, it has little to do with science, and
certainly nothing to do with an alleged "skill" to guess whether a research
project will be successful or not. There is *no* such skill. What
scientists do in those cases is pure acting (and some politics, which some
people say is the same thing ;))) ). Trust me on that one, I've seen it
myself, more than once. Now it's part of the game, and considered part of
being a "scientist". But it has only little to do with science.


>Well, "creative writing" is not quite the term here: "the criticism (=
>understanding) of literature" is what we want here to correspond to
>physics and musicology.
Yep, brain fart from me :((( . Sorry :(( .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.