05 September 2007

Wanted: Eric Brown!

No, I do not mean Hopeton Eric Brown, who for a long time was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitive list (no longer-- see below), but rather Eric Brown the ancient philosopher.

It was once difficult to find him in cyberspace, because there are literally hundreds of Eric Browns on the web.

However, some time ago Eric Brown the ancient philosopher compiled a helpful web page, a "Guide to Eric Browns on the Web", where one may ostensibly find links to, among others, Eric Brown the author of a pocket guide to numerology, and Eric Brown the magician.

The Guide of course also links you to Eric Brown the assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis. (However, when I click on the link I find it takes me to Eric Brown who is an associate professor at Washington University. Is that like, "The woman drinking gin across the room?")

No matter, it's easy to find the Eric Brown we want, because his meta-web-page, as it collates web pages for all other Eric Browns, is very nearly at the top of any Google search for "Eric Brown". (And if its links were current, no doubt it would be at the very top.)

Thus the distinctive mark of a philosopher: as no other Eric Brown in hyperspace has seen fit to assemble the class of Eric Browns. (We might follow Russell, refer to this process as abstraction, and say that Eric Brown has now identified for us the property, "named Eric Brown".)

As for Hopeton Eric Brown -- alas, you won't be able to find him, either, if you follow the link from Eric Brown's Guide. This dangerous criminal is no longer with us, having been slain in a shoot-out in Jamaica in March 2004.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

But if Eric Brown, the ancient philosopher, created the class of Eric Browns, of which he is a member, then he would have to be the univocal cause of himself, like a father of his child.