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Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd) From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 98 09:51:22 EST
You don't seem to realize that the likelyhood of someone independently rediscovering a "lost" math result is much less than the likelyhood of two people independently creating substantially similar works of art.
Malarky, the history of science (and of human civilizations) is replete with example after example of idividuals discovering the same basic theme and its proof. Just the three examples we have been using (Newton, Gauss, Fermat) are filled with comments about contemporaries discovering the same result. Review Darwin for a moment, he chose to share the fame for evolutionary theory with Wallace because he had reached the same conclusion. Had either Darwin or Wallace not chose to publish the result would still have been found and shared.
For example, all of T.S.Elliot's poetry is substantially similar to Walt Whitman's poetry. They are, for most intents and purposes, mutually interchangeable. (Emily "lick my bud" Dickinson is almost interchangeable.)
Only in the context that they are both poets who write poetry. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|