Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge (was: Style Q: Instance variables defined outside of __init__)
Ben Finney
ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Tue Mar 20 18:03:11 EDT 2018
Neil Cerutti <neilc at norwich.edu> writes:
> The Introduction to Computer Science class I'm taking divided program
> design into two categories: Top Down Design, and Object Oriented
> Design. It's good, because it reminded me of the wisdom of dividing
> memory into Random Access and Read Only.
>> My automotive course will probaly divide cars into Automatic
> Transmission, and Front Wheel Drive.
Look to the classics. Jorge Luis Borges, 1942:
Let us consider the eighth category [of those proposed by John
Wilkins for a universal language], the category of stones. Wilkins
divides them into common (silica, gravel, schist), modics (marble,
amber, coral), precious (pearl, opal), transparent (amethyst,
sapphire) and insolubles (chalk, arsenic). Almost as surprising as
the eighth, is the ninth category. This one reveals to us that
metals can be imperfect (cinnabar, mercury), artificial (bronze,
brass), recremental (filings, rust) and natural (gold, tin, copper).
Beauty belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a living brood fish,
an oblong one.
These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those
which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese
encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge'.
In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into:
(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking
pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the
present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn
with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just
broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like
flies.
<URL:http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html>
Those who want the source material for the Celestial Emporium of
Benevolent Knowledge are recommended to first read the Wikipedia article
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge>.
A relevant 2003 work gives an illustration of a similar system
<URL:http://collection.spencerart.ku.edu/eMuseumPlus?module=collection&objectId=42380>.
--
\ “I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why |
`\ should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to |
_o__) Hell?” —Homer Simpson |
Ben Finney
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