Re: [lojban] Lions and levels and the like

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

Yes, the factual situation is a little foggy with most inventions/discoveries -- 
there are always folks before the glory guy.  But the overall logic of the 
situation for the present context seems pretty clear, even if we don't quite 
know what goes where in the early part of the process (and probably never 
will).  In a word, we should let some ugly facts muck up a good theory.



----- Original Message ----
From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, November 16, 2011 4:21:00 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Lions and levels and the like

John E. Clifford wrote:
> Hmmm!  Nice case!  Of course, some first transistor must have been invented 
>that all the others copied and improved upon, but that doesn't really dodge your 
>point.  At the moment, I don't know what to suggest, except to hope that Lojban 
>still has a word for kinds.  Bunches are, inter alia, Lesniewski's wholes (but 
>xorxes doesn't like this kind of objectifying, preferring plural reference, 
>which works the same way formally).  I don't take 1a to be about kinds, but just 
>about     some unspecified bunch of lions (at least in Lojban, lo cinfo).  Kinds 
>don't seem to be the sort of things that ruin gardens, though their exemplars 
>may.  The factual situation, as far as transistors, etc. are concerned, is about 
>genealogy, all transistors descend from something invented by Shockley.  But 
>that is at least as hard to express as types, so I wait a while on it.

Actually, I just read something on this a couple days ago.

There was a patent issued in Canada for a field-effect transistor in 1925, but 
it isn't clear if any were built.  A similar patent was issued in Germany in 
1934.  Neither has much to do with the Shockley transistor other than name and 
general semiconductor nature.  Bardeen and Brattain then invented the germanium 
transistor in 1947, but Shockley ended up getting a share of the credit.  There 
was an independent invention in France in 1948.  Texas Instruments produced the 
first silicon transistor in 1954, and MOS-FETs came even later, and I think they 
are more like the 1925 idea than like the 1947 one.  It would be difficult to 
call any of the reinventions prior to 1948 as being "family tree descendants". 
Those afterwards would probably give some ancestral credit to Shockley's group, 
but that might be a legal fiction due to patent law rather than truly being 
genealogical.

The same probably goes for the brothers' Wright and the airplane.  Many others 
were independently inventing them when the Wrights first flew, and it is hard to 
argue that airplanes are necessarily more descended from Wright's plane than any 
of those others.

How to express these distinctions in Lojban is beyond anything I would attempt 
to argue, especially post xorlo.

lojbab

-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.