From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Mon Sep 29 2003 - 11:38:14 EDT
I've got to agree with Glenn here. There are no naked facts bereft of any
theoretical presuppositions or interpretations.
You say below, "If a plane crashes, *something* went wrong." Really? When
planes struck the Twin Towers 2 years ago, Osama bin Laden didn't think that anything
had "gone wrong." He thought that what had happened was profoundly right. Similarly
for Japanese kamikaze pilots. & for that matter even calling those events "crashes" is
misleading because it suggests that they (like most plane "crashes") were accidental
rather than deliberate.
Shalom,
George
Dr. Blake Nelson wrote:
>
> What a novel, literal approach to the phrase.
>
> If a plane crashes, *something* went wrong. The crash
> (the thing) speaks for itself that something went
> wrong.
>
> What exactly went wrong is a different matter and
> beside the point for the use of the phrase, because it
> is generally used in liability contexts where someone
> bears the risk of the failure, unless they can show
> that *something else* was responsible.
>
> A little context is usually a good thing to avoid
> confusion.
>
> --- Glenn Morton <glennmorton@entouch.net> wrote:
> >
> > 9-28-03
> > >-----Original Message-----
> > >From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> > [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> > >Behalf Of Jay Willingham
> > >
> > >The law has a saying, "res ipsa loquitor", e.g.
> > "the thing speaks for
> > >itself".
> >
> > res - thing, object, being, matter, affair, event,
> > fact, circumstance.
> >
> > You know, I have sat outside at night under the
> > stars, in a library with
> > lots of facts, and you know, I have never heard a
> > fact speaking for itself.
> >
>
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-- George L. Murphy gmurphy@raex.com http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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