Re: SUO: *Date 02 Mar 2002 -- Pro Forma Language
Jean-Luc,
Thanks for the reference:
> You are missing St. Augustine, de dialectica:
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/dialecticatrans.html
Other texts on the same web site include some material by Donatus
the Grammarian (from around 354 AD). He is the author of one of my
favorite quotations:
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Damn those who said our stuff before we did.]
There are several reasons for going back to the old masters:
1. They provide a better sense of perspective (and humility)
on how rapidly science actually progresses.
2. The early explorers of any subject often break new paths in
directions that the later researchers have ignored. Sometimes
those old paths were ignored because the old computers (including
humans with pencil and paper) couldn't handle the amount of data.
But now, the paths not taken may be ideally suited to our current
technology.
3. If anyone is looking for new topics for a thesis or potential
breakthrough, the best places to look are either the most recent
or the most completely forgotten. Since the most recent places
are likely to be the most crowded, the older ones are much more
promising.
A good example is Cecil Rhodes, who founded a diamond company, which
is now known as De Beers. In the 19th century, there was a big rush
of prospectors searching for diamonds in South Africa. They discovered
a rich vein of diamonds, which was largely exhausted by the time Cecil
arrived. So he bought up the claims to the exhausted mines for a very
low price.
Then Cecil R. had his team dig deeper, and they discovered a much
richer diamond vein beneath the one that had been exhausted.
Bottom line: The light might be better underneath the lamppost,
but that's not where your likely to find the hidden riches.
John Sowa