[E. Albright]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
Any scientist would strongly disagree with you because there are Unknown substances which have still yet to be found and created.
[...]
If a new fuel was developed next year... this qualifies now as an unknown nonexistent object.

For heavens sake goto school !

Please calm down.

Methinks the problem here is essentially one of semantics. I blame the English langauge. On one hand, we have the notion of "discovering" something which was created; i.e., something that did not exist. On the other hand, we have the notion of "discovering" things which existed but were unknown; e.g., a new species of parrot or moose. One refers to gaining knowledge of something which previously had no referent, and the other refers to gaining knowledge of something which previously had a referent of which the learner was ignorant. The single term "discover" conflates the two, but one can and ought to make a distinction.

If for some reason all gold in the world vanished... the properties/qualities of gold would still exist even if everyone lost knowledge about it.

Um. This doesn't parse for me. How could the properties/qualities of gold exist without a referent? Do you mean that things that were metal, pyrite-colored, more-or-less as dense as lead, etc., but not all of the above and thus "gold", would continue to exist? Or do you mean that gold's "goldness" would continue to exist in an abstract (ideal) form? And if the latter, are we then talking something like a Platonic Ideal (in that you've also posited that everyone will have forgotten what gold is, and "goldness" could not then just be a mental construct of what it is to be gold)?

[ March 19, 2004, 20:48: Message edited by: E. Albright ]