From: Conrad Schneiker <schneik@...>
Date: 2001-01-26T13:02:07+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:9908] First quines in ruby?

On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 Hal Fulton wrote:

# Maybe you are familiar with the practice of writing programs that
# reproduce themselves. (I always liked Plauger's comment -- I think
# it was Plauger -- who said, "This is often done in FORTRAN, for the
# same reason that three-legged races are popular.")
# 
# The word "quine" comes from the mathematician Quine, by way of
# Hofstadter's book _Goedel, Escher, Bach_.

I wonder if Quine might have thought that Gauss and Vermeer were more 
fitting counterpoints of Bach (even though Goedel and Escher were both 
pretty clever and creative). I know I do. Anyway, here is some follow-up 
on Quine: According to the Jan 13, 2001 Economist, Prof. Quine died last 
Dec. 25. The term 'quine' was also reportedly used to denote the rejection 
of a distinction. Quine was semi-famous for rejecting the fact-meaning 
distinction (aka analytic-synthetic dichotomy), regarding such things as 
matters of degree rather than kind. Quine also held that (real) philosophy 
was a (developing) science. 

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)