Goatist Miscellany
Fiona Woollard, of Magdalen College, Oxford, offers the following proof which she hopes clear up the contentious question of whether everything is, in fact, a goat.
Suppose everything is a
goat.
Define a goatom or atomic goat to be a goat that contains no goats.
Then X the set of all goatoms is a goat.
Suppose there are no goatoms, then X does not contain any goats and is thus
a goatom.
Suppose there is a goatom. By the observed nature of goats, a goat (and thus
a goatom) is divisible into parts, and each of these parts is a goat, by assumption.
So the goatom contains goats and is thus not a goatom.
In either case, we have a contradiction, and thus have proved that our assumption
was false.
So everything is not a goat.
So there are no goats.
We are thus commited to the position of anti-goatism.
Silvan Urfer writes: "It was with great interest that I read the logical proof that everything is a goat. Since this undoubtedly is true, we must consider the following implication:
1) If everything is a goat,
then something also is a goat.
2) Two goats certainly are something
3) Therefore, two goats are a goat.
I assume this means the
very principles of mathemathics are in need of change to adapt them to the great
unified theory of goatism and would be very interested to hear another goatist
opinion on this."
Eric Schwitzgebel of the Department of Philosophy, University of California points out the following:
The classical Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (aka Zhuangzi), who along with Laozi (if there really was such a fellow) serves as the original font of Taoism, says the following:
"To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a nonattribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse, Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse" (trans. Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia UP: 1964).
(This paragraph is unquestionably a response to Kung-sun Lung's famous dictum: "a white horse is not a horse" (for a proof of the latter proposition, see A.C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao, Open Court: 1989).
Certainly Chuang Tzu should have concluded that the ten thousand things are one goat. It may be that fallacious reasoning led him to this erroneous conclusion. In any case, it is a shame that he should come so close to goatism without hitting upon it.
Throughout the ages many have suspected that there's no point in learning anything. Now, however, we have evidence that this is true! At least it transpires that knowledge acts as a brake on an individual's earning potential. This theorem (the more you know the less you earn) can be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is power
Postulate 2: Time is money
As every engineer knows: Power=Work/Time
Since: Knowledge=Power
and: Time=Money
by substitution we have: Knowledge=Work/Money
Solving for Money, we get: Money=Work/Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.
CONCLUSION: The less you know, the more you make.
Goatists should not be surprised at this. As everything is a goat it follows that there is little point in knowing anything else. Indeed time spent learning anything else is time used unproductively.
The ever alert Rick Lewis from Philosophy Now magazine may have spotted a piece of subtle guerilla action by Christian clerics with Goatist leanings. He writes:
"In the film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', Rowan Atkinson plays the part of a bumbling vicar who in the wedding service says: "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Goat." But was this really a slip of the tongue, or, as I suspect, a deliberate attempt by dissidents within the Church to reveal an exciting minority strand of Christian theological thought?"
Of course, an alternative hypothesis also suggests itself: that the advice from the Christian Church on the text for their wedding service was orthodox, but that the script writer Richard Curtis, the director Mike Newell, or the actor Rowan Atkinson inserted the dissident wording. It is even possible that all three of them conspired to undermine Christian ritual with Goatist radicalism.
Dilemma
Paul Brownsley has pointed out that it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that we speak of being on the horns of a dilemma. Indeed, it seems likely that our collective unconscious finds many ways to refer to the perplexing goatist reality which underlies superficial appearance.
This disturbing concept was brought to our attention by Sally Parker Ryan who remembers when it was a hot idea in radical Australian philosophical circles. It seems that these rebellious thinkers were seeking to deny the absolute goatishness of everything by promoting the counterexample of the goat free clothes line, which they perceived as: "...a disturbingly illuminating concept - an insight into The Truth of unthinkable magnitude". Later, with careers to worry about and with departmental heads who did not look favourably upon controversial mavericks, the originators of this idea pushed it underground, and sought to maintain that it had never been more than a mind-altering substance induced humorous aside. However, we cannot but hope that more clothes liners will be brave enough to emerge from the closet to tell us more.
Song of the Goat
Click this link to hear: a goat. You will need a Real Audio player to hear this beautiful sound - if you don't have one you can get one for free from: Real Networks.
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