I do it all the time, consciously, but purely for expressive purposes. For example, I might say, "His attitude underwent a quantum shift." Is that the sort of thing that irritates you? Because I don't think I'm prepared to give it up.DrPhill wrote:It is a pet peeve of mine and when it happens it irritates me.
Part of it may be covered by people misusing specialist languages like quantum physics, or information technology (or even both together) to create gibberish.
Some words do have wider legitimate application. Once I used the word "mayhem" and a lawyer admonished me, her contention being that as it was a legal term, it should only be reserved for use in a legal context. Well, it's a literary term too, but she couldn't be convinced. She must be endlessly aghast.
An holistic approach to the question of lion-ness, and it somewhat parallels my own philosophy. But I'm still willing to consider a caged lion to be a lion in at least a conventional sense; as it is, we can't even speak of a caged lion without using the word "lion". We rely on paradigms-in-isolation because they're very convenient for communication purposes. Where my viewpoint appears to diverge from yours is that I see a cage as an environment in its own right too, as is a bathtub, or outer space. In absolute terms the lion cannot be independent of its environment wherever it is, nor can the environment be independent of its lion; the sheer impossibility of it is a hard fact. But we tend to ignore this as so much background noise, so we speak of the lion as if it were a discrete entity because language won't readily allow for anything else; we typically make the mistake of seeing the lion as separate, and this may account for language's shortcomings. Or it may be that language itself is the culprit. But to be honest, I'm of the opinion that in ultimate terms, one can't separate the two sides of that coin, either; one can only do so provisionally.DrPhill wrote:If you take a lion from the serengeti and put it in a zoo do you still have a lion? I would say no. A lion is really only a lion when it is doing lion things in a lion environment. Eating lion-prey and mating with other lions.
Putting lions in a cage, and lion prey in the next cage does not 'reproduce the serengetti'.
What I can agree on with you is that a caged lion is in an abnormal, forced environment, and as such cannot live to its fullest, most natural potential when we consider the original environment the creature developed from and is consequently built for. Of course freedom on the veld would be the most ideal and proper of circumstances for it, and I too find something tragic in any caged animal, no matter how well it is otherwise cared for. Not surprisingly, going to a zoo is not my idea of a good time. But I hesitate to go so far as to agree that, when caged, it is less of a lion, or not even a lion, all because of abnormal conditions imposed upon it; regardless of its surrounding context, it will still behave entirely as a lion in meeting those conditions.