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

[James Cervantes]

a-ness can be *like* b-ness but a can never be "equal to/with" b???

- Jim

On 10/22/06, Roger Day <rog3r.day at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>
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