Flogging a dead horse

< Can I disentangle the riddle that you have presented me with? >

Let me perhaps put it in another way:

Because artists and scientists sometimes diverge in method, are those who diverge in method always artists and scientists?

Dear Josef K


To answer your question:

<<
Because artists and scientists sometimes diverge in method, are those who diverge in method always artists and scientists?
>>


Liam Hudson in his book 'Contrary Imaginations' makes a distinction between 'convergent thinkers' (scientists) and 'divergent thinkers' (artists).

I do not necessarily think there is a huge difference between these two ways of thinking. The man who discovered the benzene ring, had a dream in which he dreamt of a snake biting its own tail. However in the Britain that Liam Hudson grew up in, and particularly in Psychology - the subject he studied. There was an important academic distinction between the Arts and the Sciences. People in the Arts were expected to behave in a certain way, and people in the Sciences were expected to behave in a different way.

You sentences actually contains 'chopped logic'. The second premise does not follow from the first premise.

Definitions of chopped logic on the Web:

-Reasoning which is improper; sophistry

-One who bandies words or is very argumentative.

-Characterized by equivocation or by overly complex or specious argumentation; improperly reasoned.

-—Idiom
chop logic, to reason or dispute argumentatively; draw unnecessary distinctions.





In other words, are you taking the piss? or pish, as they say in Bonnie Scotland.

<I do not necessarily think there is a huge difference between these two ways of thinking.>

That is most strange. You have said the opposite in other posts.

< You sentences actually contains 'chopp ed logic'. The second premise does not follow from the first premise. >

Quite so. The question is rhetorical.

Here is a catalogue of your assumptions and conclusions:

a. The sentence from Conrad may have no meaning.
b. It is not necessary for a sentence to have meaning to be art.
c. There is a division between scientists and artists in this matter.
d. To require meaning in such a sentence is to exhibit a scientific nature.

The rhetorical question therefore embodies the error in logic that you have committed.