Re: OT: art and language and THE DAVINCI CODE

En réponse à Sally Caves :


>THANK YOU!!  Actually, my scientist friend, a longstanding one, and one with
>whom I continually clash, has an arrogant way of posing questions to you.
>He wants everything in black and white, and he wants to support the odious
>theory that since he can explain to you what an isoceles triangle is, you
>ought to be able to explain to him what a good piece of literature is.  So
>while we're eating sushi and having a convivial time, the conversation comes
>round to teaching genres of science fiction, a genre he "hates," and he
>challenges me to "teach" him, right then and there, in the restaurant, in
>front of our other friends, what constitutes good science fiction, and what
>are its rules.  No SF is good, bear in mind, in his estimation (except
>Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey), so I'm already in a lose-lose situation.
>"No really.  As if I were one of your students come in for office hours."  I
>told him that I got paid for that, and let's return to enjoying our dinner.
>You see, when Bob wants to engage you in a discussion of something, it's
>usually to prove you wrong, or to prove that you can't analyse the problems
>of what you study.
I have unfortunately met quite a few of those "scientists". They are the
ones that haunt faculty councils and such, who have a very definite view on
everything and cannot accept people to challenge their views on things. In
private matters, they may be nice people, but professionally, they are the
plague of science :(( . A scientist who thinks he's always right and will
only discuss to prove other people wrong is not a scientist, because they
have forgotten the main part of the scientific mind: the fact that our job
is primarily to learn, not to teach.

>   I told him he ought to take one of my classes.  It
>really does take fourteen weeks to teach people something from scratch about
>how to write well.  Especially SF and Fantasy with its rigorous and various
>rules.
Indeed. Doesn't he remember all the time he spent in scientific classes,
even just to learn what an isoceles triangle is? If he has needed time to
learn what he knows about hard sciences, how can he expect other subjects
to be different?

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.