Re: Lisp is Sin

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
I think it may be useful to think of an invention as more of a
discovery if it is necessary or very much better suited than any
alternative to the task at hand.

Although I understand what you're saying, and the distinction you're trying to draw, I disagree. Just because an invention becomes indispensable does not mean that its creation was inevitable, or that, absent the inventor, mankind may not have had to wait a long time for the device to be invented by someone else.

In our current era of intellectual property, the distinction is vital. I believe that inventors of non-obvious[1] devices should be rewarded with patents, that discoverers of extant phenomena should be fêted but not granted patents, and that patent offices should better mind the distinction.


I think that since we have on line dictionnaries, there's no excuse
not to read it more, and constat that to invent is synonym of to
discover and to discover is synonym of to invent.

You can use these terms interchangeably.

This is complete balderdash. Columbus did not invent America, and Watson, Crick and whatshername did not invent DNA. James Watt and his contemporaries did not discover (dis-cover = uncover = reveal that which was already present) the steam engine.

Words have shades of meaning, and very few pairs of words mean exactly the same thing. The best that can be said of 'invent' and 'discover' is that a writer can (usually) mix them up and the reader will still understand what was meant. The best that can be said of many web dictionaries is that they may give someone a vague understanding of a word's meaning.


[1] Non-obvious: Unlike, say, Amazon's famous patent on one-click ordering. If everyone in the field says "well, duh" upon hearing about a supposed breakthrough, the non-obviousness of the invention ought to be called into question.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Flow of Time.
    ... |>>>To Henri, ... |>> Did Mozart invent or discover his music? ... |>> Did man create them or simply discover that they could be made to exist. ... |>>>that one day he discovered a law of nature. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: The Flow of Time.
    ... |>>To Henri, ... |> Did Mozart invent or discover his music? ... |> Did man create them or simply discover that they could be made to exist. ... |>>former always existed since they are part of mother nature; ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: When Did Mathmatics Come About
    ... then discover that, like any game with rules, you can do a lot more with ... but even more just grows out of other math. ... want to solve equations in radicals, and so you invent group theory and ... these are the cat's pajamas, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Just how does magic work?
    ... >> invent or discover it? ... Actually with mathematics it's a bit of each, ... > there must still be things that we've yet to discover ... the scientific mind that postulates 'Magions', ...
    (alt.fan.harry-potter)
  • Re: Lisp is Sin
    ... > discover and to discover is synonym of to invent. ... attempt to formalize all mathematics in terms of a concept that is ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)