The ash cloud and the oil spill have been filling the air in my house for the last few weeks, enough to lodge themselves in the recesses of my mind from where they harry Fortress Logic. The oil spill – I don’t question so much, but the ash cloud is another matter altogether. Why is it ‘the’ ash cloud?
Granted, the frequent references to it, warnings, jokes, doom scenarios peddled by the media and my own inability to get English language newspapers in Warsaw when the planes are grounded in the UK due to ‘the’ ash cloud have thrust something so incredibly distant and rarified to the forefront of my consciousness. It has become to me a presence somewhat like Russell’s teapot – I think of it as being out there somewhere, visible to those who strongly believe in it. And if everybody refers to it as ‘the’ ash cloud, I take my cue from them and do likewise.
But it can’t be ‘the’ ash cloud, can it? In terms of Aristotelian categories, it does not resemble the 2004 tsunami, the Haiti earthquake of earlier this year or even the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – the closest analogy. It is not a uniform cloud and, in my understanding at least, it is not connected to the source by a thin thread of ash. The volcano is like a smoker – it takes a puff on its stack, then broods, then takes another puff, and broods again, and so on.
The point is ‘the’ ash cloud is something in our minds. The real ash cloud is many clouds, just like regular clouds in the sky, whose substance rather than whose properties alone undergoes constant change. It is not the same cloud that threatened us four weeks ago that is threatening us today, is it? They soar, they drift around Europe and then they peter out, don’t they? There are clear days in between. Yet when I hear about ‘the’ ash cloud on the radio, it is like a beach ball in a fish tank, bobbing on the ripples of aerated water, scattering aquatic life into the distant corners of the tank.
The Chernobyl cloud had a better claim to the definite article ‘the’, it seems to me. There is little ‘definite’ about the ash cloud. Meteorologists give names to powerful natural phenomena, like Hurricane Katrina, or assign numbers, like the UK met office to weather fronts. Or that’s what I think they are, although I’d rather not know because knowledge would spoil the joy of listening to the shipping forecast. At any rate, we might hear something like ‘Low Viking 922 moving steadily east and losing its identity by same time.’ ‘Identity’ is the key word – if these things lose their identity at some point, they have enjoyed an identity for a while at least. The ash cloud is like Phoenix out of ashes. It loses its identity and then – we are led to believe by the ‘the’ – regains it.
What would it take for ‘the’ ash cloud to lose its identity if multiple dissipation is not enough? Perhaps Mount Etna erupting? In a universe consisting of more than one object of the same kind, identity is wiped out. The definite article truly calls for a definition, thus ‘The ash cloud over Spain has spread out,’ is logically ‘there is an ash cloud called x, it is over Spain, and if any ash cloud is identical to x, then it has spread out.’
Granted, the frequent references to it, warnings, jokes, doom scenarios peddled by the media and my own inability to get English language newspapers in Warsaw when the planes are grounded in the UK due to ‘the’ ash cloud have thrust something so incredibly distant and rarified to the forefront of my consciousness. It has become to me a presence somewhat like Russell’s teapot – I think of it as being out there somewhere, visible to those who strongly believe in it. And if everybody refers to it as ‘the’ ash cloud, I take my cue from them and do likewise.
But it can’t be ‘the’ ash cloud, can it? In terms of Aristotelian categories, it does not resemble the 2004 tsunami, the Haiti earthquake of earlier this year or even the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – the closest analogy. It is not a uniform cloud and, in my understanding at least, it is not connected to the source by a thin thread of ash. The volcano is like a smoker – it takes a puff on its stack, then broods, then takes another puff, and broods again, and so on.
The point is ‘the’ ash cloud is something in our minds. The real ash cloud is many clouds, just like regular clouds in the sky, whose substance rather than whose properties alone undergoes constant change. It is not the same cloud that threatened us four weeks ago that is threatening us today, is it? They soar, they drift around Europe and then they peter out, don’t they? There are clear days in between. Yet when I hear about ‘the’ ash cloud on the radio, it is like a beach ball in a fish tank, bobbing on the ripples of aerated water, scattering aquatic life into the distant corners of the tank.
The Chernobyl cloud had a better claim to the definite article ‘the’, it seems to me. There is little ‘definite’ about the ash cloud. Meteorologists give names to powerful natural phenomena, like Hurricane Katrina, or assign numbers, like the UK met office to weather fronts. Or that’s what I think they are, although I’d rather not know because knowledge would spoil the joy of listening to the shipping forecast. At any rate, we might hear something like ‘Low Viking 922 moving steadily east and losing its identity by same time.’ ‘Identity’ is the key word – if these things lose their identity at some point, they have enjoyed an identity for a while at least. The ash cloud is like Phoenix out of ashes. It loses its identity and then – we are led to believe by the ‘the’ – regains it.
What would it take for ‘the’ ash cloud to lose its identity if multiple dissipation is not enough? Perhaps Mount Etna erupting? In a universe consisting of more than one object of the same kind, identity is wiped out. The definite article truly calls for a definition, thus ‘The ash cloud over Spain has spread out,’ is logically ‘there is an ash cloud called x, it is over Spain, and if any ash cloud is identical to x, then it has spread out.’
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