Re: Enlgish Speaking group?


All Things Mopar wrote:
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, TOF laid
this on an unsuspecting readership ...


james wrote:
X-No-Archive: yes

In message <MPG.1f07699553d7b46498ab72@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
the Omrud <usenet.omrud@xxxxxxxxx> writes

What's an incorrect fact?

If I were to proclaim on a Usenet group that the moon orbits
the earth, about twenty posters would get over-excited and
jump up and down, wetting themselves, and shouting that the
earth and moon orbit each other about their common centre of
mass.

It's an incorrect fact. Assuming you had an exhaustible
supply of air and gramophone needles, you could spend all
your life watching the earth from a convenient moon rock and
nary once would the earth orbit the moon. The purveyors of
incorrect facts translate a wobble into an orbit -- the more
demented ones might even calculate an apogee and perigee.


While it's certainly possible to have a dispute about whether
such things as 'facts' exist at all in the sense usually
conveyed, the conception of a 'fact' is unambiguous. If
something is a fact, it's correct and if it's not correct,
then it's not a fact. Facts are correct by definition.

ah, but the real trick is to know exectly WHEN what you think you
have is "fact" and when it is even 0.0001% fiction.


That's a different issue from whether "facts" can ever be "incorrect".
A person proposing that X is a fact says that none can prove otherwise,
that it's truth. If someone proves that X is incorrect, then X ceases
to be capable of being described as a fact and "not X" becomes correct,
and thus a fact, at least in conception.

TOF

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Enlgish Speaking group?
    ... If I were to proclaim on a Usenet group that the moon ... shouting that the earth and moon orbit each other about ... It's an incorrect fact. ... and nary once would the earth orbit the moon. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Enlgish Speaking group?
    ... Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, TOF laid ... If I were to proclaim on a Usenet group that the moon orbits ... earth and moon orbit each other about their common centre of ... It's an incorrect fact. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Enlgish Speaking group?
    ... If I were to proclaim on a Usenet group that the moon orbits the earth, ... about twenty posters would get over-excited and jump up and down, ... It's an incorrect fact. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Enlgish Speaking group?
    ... If I were to proclaim on a Usenet group that the moon orbits the earth, about twenty posters would get over-excited and jump up and down, wetting themselves, and shouting that the earth and moon orbit each other about their common centre of mass. ... It's an incorrect fact. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: The impact of "Impact"?
    ... Besides, didn't they say they have 48 hours 'til the moon impacts, ... they thing the moon orbits, ... twice as massive as the earth, it might just suck you up). ... of magic anti-gravity. ...
    (rec.arts.tv)
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