Re: Confessions of a CoBOL programmer

In article <92694c30-327e-42b4-9026-3adcea8d0b3f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Alistair <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 28 Mar, 22:06, docdw...@xxxxxxxxx () wrote:

'How many of you think that all men are mortal?' (hands up)
'How many of you think that Socrates is a man?' (hands up)
'How many of you think that Socrates is mortal?'  'Uh..... maybe I was
wrong when I said I thought all men are mortal... or maybe Socrates isn't
a man now.'

Tsk! Tsk! Even you should know better than to ask these questions.

Men ARE mortal.
Socrates WAS a man.
Socrates has been proven to be mortal (for most peoples' value of
PROVEN).

Mr Maclean, might it be possible that the questions I posed referred to a
Socrates who is still alive today? The name is not unique, last I looked.

[snip]

(note - Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Book I, Part 1, paragraph 4, sentence
1: 'A syllogism is discourse in which, certain things being stated,
something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being
so. I mean by the last phrase that they produce the consequence, and by
this, that no further term is required from without in order to make the
consequence necessary.' -http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/prior.mb.txt)

Have you been a student of philosophy or should I be enquiring as to
how you can afford the time to research all of your answers?

I have read a few things on the backs of several cereal-boxes here and
there, Mr Maclean... no, wait, Prior Analytics would be on the front, on
the back one should find Posterior Analytics. This wonderful web-thingie
allows for rapid research and citing, yes... but the old form of 'Author,
Title, (publisher, edition, printing), book, chapter, section, paragraph,
sentence, word' for citing was one I learned long before it existed.

DD
.