Literary incest
We've recently started a new class, "Wijsbegeerte voor AI" which roughly translates as "Philosophy for AI". That basically covers the whole theme of the class. As I mentioned in my previous post I had to start the whole thing of with a short speech on an article by Langdon Winner (http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/).
After reading quite a few scientific articles, not just by Mr. Winner, I've started noticing something... It's hard to be original in the world of science. Most articles are littered with quotes and references, which sometimes take more space than the author's own words.
In short, a "good" scientific article is no more than: "Statement by X must be true, because Y says that, if Z is correct, X can't be false. Furthermore P says, according to Q's findings, that R has a point.I'd like to hereby quote X on..." etc. etc.
After reading quite a few scientific articles, not just by Mr. Winner, I've started noticing something... It's hard to be original in the world of science. Most articles are littered with quotes and references, which sometimes take more space than the author's own words.
In short, a "good" scientific article is no more than: "Statement by X must be true, because Y says that, if Z is correct, X can't be false. Furthermore P says, according to Q's findings, that R has a point.I'd like to hereby quote X on..." etc. etc.