Well, that's interesting.

[conuly]

I am firmly (firmly) of the belief that saying "temperature" when you mean "fever" is wrong, possibly even morally wrong.

And yet, I also believe that prescriptivism is wrong, possibly even morally wrong.

Well, it's easy enough to see how I reconcile this. Like most people, I'm fully capable of holding two totally contradictory thoughts in my head at the same time, without exploding. Really cool, huh?

That is the sort of thing that people will rail against. It's just silly, illogical (and not "illogical" like Spock seems to think) thinking, and It's Simply Not Right.

People do a lot of that sort of thing. People are prone to amazing leaps of mislogic, and amazing amounts of superstition (the current fad for antibacterial everything is, as far as I'm concerned, no less superstitious than crossing your fingers, especially when the evidence all shows that it's detrimental to make the world sterile), and all sorts of "bad" things.

But it occurs to me that there's probably a reason for all this. I mean to say, the human mind has lasted us a fairly long time, and it hasn't let us down yet, it might not altogether be wrong to have all these "flaws". Don't know what the advantage might be to any of them, but until any of us actually has a firm idea of how the human mind works (not likely), I'd rather avoid catagorizing them as good or bad facets of how we think.

Does that make sense? It made sense in my head, but it's currently in the 100s over here and my brain might be frying.

Comments

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I think of a "temperature" and a "fever" as two entirely different things, and that's how I've always heard doctors use them, too. A fever is above 101° and a temperature is below that (yet more than the person's normal body temperature). They signal different things and require different responses.

The same distinction is made in Spanish, btw, with calentura and fiebre respectively.

[conuly]

The doctors are simply wrong, then.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

It's a distinction that needs to be made, though, and so you need to call it something.

[conuly]

Sure thing.

Lower-than-normal-temperature; normal body temperature; low-grade fever; high fever.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Why do you get to decide and doctors don't?

[conuly]

Because you can't have temperature meaning two distinct things, one of which is a subset of another. Why shouldn't I decide that?

(Actually, true facts here, if I ruled the world I would totally spend my time on petty issues like this.)

[sayga.livejournal.com]

right, because everyone has a *temperature* at any given time, even if they're dead...

[conuly]

Look, I'm a hypocritical pedant, I know, I know.

Language changes, it does... it just... it just...

It's only supposed to change in ways that I, personally, like!

That doesn't make me a bad person. Does it?

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I'm agreeing with you. That wasn't a "right, because..." it was "RIGHT!! Because..."

[conuly]

Weirdly, I'm not agreeing with me, though