1) If Aunty has ‘permutational dyslexia’ which maps 1319->1913 the permutation is ambiguous due to the repeated ‘1′ digit, and the two possible percursors to 1325 are 2513 and 1523. (Leading alas nowhere as far as I can tell).
2) Does “not at all” mean roughly “you’re welcome” in British English, and if so is that a clue?

I agree that there is much to savor in that book, (and in my case at least, much left to savor; there’s a lot I haven’t yet understood).

Jerry

The abstract notion is surely the term “opposite”, and not the choice of the states to which it is applied. In what sense is dark the opposite of light, or hard the opposite of soft, other than in terms of the absence of one member of the chosen pair? In that case, soft becomes the absence of hard, dark the absence of light and cold the absence of heat. The context in which this (philosophical) comparison was made may well have been a purely domestic one, and so the absence of heat from a fire that has burned out, would have been an adequate illustration of heat’s opposite state, “absence of heat”, called “cold.”

In terms of “recording … for later comparison”, how would one measure relative hardness, I wonder? Perhaps by placing a piece of butter outside at midday and, regularly, testing the degree to which it becomes less hard over a given period of time, until it becomes completely liquid. One could then use the scale as a type against which to test the hardness of other substances with some degree of accuracy: “This honey is as hard as butter at midday plus 100 drips (of the clepsydra).” In a similar way, the degree of hotness of a fire might be measured by placing a straw into it at regular intervals and measuring how quickly it ignites (another method, assumimg a good supply of slaves or felons, would be to have one of them thrust a hand into the fire so that the length of time taken for the slave to pass out in pain can be measured. This would have the disadvantages, though, that a) there might be considerable variability in the slaves’ tolerance to pain and so some degree of inaccuracy in the results and b) the inconvenience of having always to carry a supply of slaves around.

But consider taking some of that snow and putting it over a fire (since Anaximander could produce heat but not refrigeration we’ll have to make this a unidirectional experiment). He would see it turn into water and then, depending on the outside temperature, either simply disappear or turn into a haze in the air.

How would anyone of the time have described what was happening (remember that these people have no way of recording a temperature for later comparison with other temperatures and, indeed, no concept of the difference between heat and temperature)?

I could see someone describing it in accordance with a spectrum from hard to soft (or, if you prefer, cold to soft). I could see a spectrum from cold to comfortable to uncomfortable. I could see a spectrum from white to clear to invisible. Or dry to wet to invisible. All of these represent a report by an observer using his or her senses. You can *feel* it moving from cold to soft. You can *see* it moving from white to clear.

In contrast, moving from cold to somthing called hot is completely abstract until Fahrenheit, Celsius, Reaumur and friends devised scales to allow comparison: “that snow we found yesterday is ‘colder’ than the water in the stream we walked through this afternoon.”

South of Miletus, almost within sight of the ancient Lycian city of Patara, there are mountains that hold snow throughout the year, and from whose sides, icy-cold water is directed in channels to irrigate the hot, dry plains below. In stretches where the water flows less swiftly, it warms quickly in the sun and, as one paddles, one can wade from the tepid shallows into the chilly depths quite easily. Similarly, one’s drinking water (or wine, if preferred), which has become almost hot, through being carried on one’s pack in a metal bottle, can quickly be cooled by placing it in the same channels or, if one is higher up, by burying it for a while in the snow. At night, under a clear, starry sky, frost forms on one’s tent even in summer, and it is only as the morning sun’s hot presence becomes felt that the coldness of the night can be eventually dispelled.

The main thing that distinguishes human beings from the other animals is our talent for connecting one idea with another, and our ability to find a whole realm of associations in the words we use from a very early age, like 2 year old Alexander already thinking of cake, singing, and blowing out the candles when he hears the word “birthday”. That’s why the obliteration of such resonant nouns as “liquorice”, “mistletoe” and indeed “psalm” from a modern child’s acquired vocabulary (never mind their interesting spellings) and to substitute concepts of a probably more limited lifespan, such as “MP3 player” and “chatroom” is such a tragedy.

Anyway I’ve now published my own blog post about all this, in case you’d like to read more of my rant.