[geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 10:25:45PM -0800, Peter L. Wargo wrote:
> Hellen Keller was an amazing person.  Deaf, dumb, and blind, yet she 
> still learned to communicate with the rest of us by first learning 
> symbolic association.  But, how do you explain the concept of the 
> rainbow to her?  Or even more abstract ideas, like freedom and justice?

The former with difficulty, the latter exactly the same as you would to
any other person.  Our frame of reference for describing rainbows is
based around us sensing them, which she couldn't so we would have trouble
putting it into an appropriate frame of reference for her.  But we can't
directly sense freedom and justice anyway so we *already* explain it in
terms available in her frame of reference.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

      We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity
      has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
                                                -- Richard Dawkins