[New-Poetry] Re: Books a poet should own

[Roger Day]

In computerese

for integers, eq or == or .eq. or even equals

are identity functions in various languages.

if a == b:
    <do something interesting>

So when a is *identitical* to b in all respects, then something
interesting will happen. This isn't similarity: this is a
"straightforward" 1 == 1 (where a has a value of  1 and b has a value
of 1). This gets interesting if the symbols represent objects.  Can
you say 'a' is 'b' in maths? I suppose you could say that == is "is
like", but that seem's wrong as well. a is identical is to b seems
stronger and more apt. You may think that this is quibbling - and I
wouldn't argue with you - but you can't argue with the compiler! And
it has it's purposes in a maths and physics, where such fine points
are argued endlessly.

The notation = can be seen as a mapping function and really should be
denoted as <= or <- if this didn't exhaust the notation so

x = x + 1

the resultant value of the function "x+1" replaces the previous value
that x had. So "=" does not equal "similarity" or identity. So the =
notation is probably the equivalent of 'has': in the previous previous
paragraph, the statements "a has the value of 1" and "b has the value
of 1" is denoted by

a = 1
b = 1

Similarity has a lot of play in geometry -  "polygons are similar  if
their corresponding (matching) angles are equal and the ratio of their
corresponding sides are in proportion." So "like" has a very precise
meaning. So for similarity, we have the notation of:

=~ (or tilda over the equals).

HTH

Roger

On 10/22/06, Jason Quackenbush <jfq at myuw.net> wrote:
> Kazmandu at aol.com wrote:
> > When I took physics one of the
> > first things the professor said was that '=' means 'is like' not 'is'
> > even though we say 'is'.
>
> That sounds weird to me. As Wittgenstein pointed out in his review of Coffey's "The Science of Logic," a lot of people have a pretty entrenched
> confusion between the "is" that's the linguistic copula and the "is" that's an expression of Identity, and I've worked very hard to get the difference
> clear in my head. When I see "=" that means identity, or "is" not "is like", to me. What I take it he was saying was that in physics it should be
> taken to be more like the copula? I mean, it would really throw all the metaphysicians and mathematical logicians for a loop if "=" really just
> expressed a relation that entailed similarity, and maybe that's good enough reason to say that it does, but the more i think about this sentence
> above, the more confused I get. Would you mind expounding a bit on what your professor meant by that? I only got a B- in freshman physics.
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