From: kent@bywater.songbird.com

On Sat, Oct 25, 1997 at 04:28:52PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

...

Any idea how a term meaning 'at right angles' came to hold all the various interpretations it now does?...

I see this word in a lot of my reading and it almost never implies any sort of 'indipendent multi-variant reference system'.

I can't believe that you haven't studied vector spaces, Jim. In that particular niche of mathematics, the meaning you quote is precisely the meaning of 'orthogonal'. Vector algebra underlies a very large part of mathematics, and modern physics would not exist without it.

I believe that is Jim's point. The dictionary definition and "one task, one tool" seem to have quite a gap between them. -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant@notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################