Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 231.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: "De Beer Jennifer <jad@sun.ac.za>" <jad@sun.ac.za> (21)
Subject: RE: 16.225 theory vs practice
[2] From: Brian Whatcott <betwys@DIRECTVInternet.com> (21)
Subject: Re: 16.225 theory vs practice
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 06:25:45 +0100
From: "De Beer Jennifer <jad@sun.ac.za>" <jad@sun.ac.za>
Subject: RE: 16.225 theory vs practice
Dear Willard & humanists,
On the theory and practice of encoding. In teaching a course on HTML I
stumbled across the following: Many reference sources on HTML will insist
that when encoding a/any color, the RGB color value should be preceded by
an hash e.g.
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
and yet, quite by accident (memory failure), I omitted the hash in numerous
examples. Even so, the colors were rendered, both in IE5.5 and NN4.7 on
Win2000. Reminded of the recent anniversary of the :-) I wondered about
the history of this hash. A cursory glance via Google on this matter
produced nothing substantive. Out of sheer curiosity I wondered whether
fellow Humanists had a clue or two as to why one uses the hash when it is
seemingly not required.
Advance thanks, Jennifer
PS: I'm not inclined to think that this is a browser compatibility matter.
--- Jennifer De Beer * Web Administrator * MPhil candidate: Information and Knowledge Management Universiteit Stellenbosch University, ZA (W3) sun.ac.za--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 06:26:39 +0100 From: Brian Whatcott <betwys@DIRECTVInternet.com> Subject: Re: 16.225 theory vs practice
At 01:14 AM 9/26/02, Wlodzimierz Sobkowiak wrote:
>Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt. >Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum. >Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint: >nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!
If I construe this rather idiomatically as:
"Theory is, if one knows everything and nothing works. Practice is, if everything works and no one knows why. Around here, theory and practice are united: nothing works and nobody knows why! "
...then the natural follow-on is "If it is working, don't fix it."
The theory/practice couple generates some hand-wringing among physicists, as it happens. For them, a theory is the highest flowering of the modeling activity which constitutes their region of science-space. This topic crops up when they discuss Creation Science (so called) which dismisses Darwin's Evolution as 'just a theory.' (PHYS-L list has an accessible archive on listserv@lists.nau.edu).
One detects a comparable usage from mechanics and technicians, who can also be heard using the phrase, "In theory,...." dismissively.
Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!
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