At 07:10 -0700 8/3/1999, Marion Gunn wrote:
>Michael Everson wrote:
>> ...
>> >until the Congress of the United States pass a bill to the effect that
>> >$\pi>4$[1], a new major version of TeX is impossible.
>>
>> Change is the only constant in our universe. :-)
>>
>> ME
>
>No. Constancy is.:-) mg
Or perhaps "Constants aren't, variables don't," sometimes, maybe.
Roughly speaking, constants are names and descriptions, and variables are
pronouns. The question of names without referents will take us back to
Plato's Beard and the Square Circle, and on to non-standard arithmetic and
other rwars. (Is it sufficient that a name have a referent, or must we be
able to prove that it has a referent, or must we be able to construct its
referent, or...? And what happens when we prove that something (a) exists,
and (b) cannot be constructed?)
There is also the question of supposed names with more than one referent.
At any rate,
"Sufficient unto the day is the rigor thereof."--Ken Iverson
-- Edward Cherlin edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu "It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you know that ain't so."--Mark Twain, or else some other prominent 19th century humorist and wit
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