In article <008e01c35d3a$cd213de0$0300a8c0 / austin.rr.com>,
Hal E. Fulton <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:
><offtopic>
>When I was working on _The Ruby Way_ and gathering quotations
>to intersperse in the material -- and I admit some of these
>are kind of hokey -- I was thumbing through the writings of
>Confucius. No, seriously. And I found a quote that I almost
>used, that reminded me of duck typing: "If an urn does not
>have the properties of an urn, can it truly be said to be
>an urn?" :) That may be wrong, it's from memory. Intriguing,
>though, isn't it? Predates Bishop Berkely, John Locke, 
>Immanuel Kant by 2000 years. Perhaps even predates Plato. 
>My history isn't that good.
></offtopic>

I think he only just pre-dates Plato (427-347 B.C.) as some people put
Confucius at around 551-479 B.C.

Quine may have an intersting take on what makes something an object, but
he was another latecomer and we may need to do a little species
shuffling:

[ "There's a rabbit",
  "There we have a rabbit",
  "Lo! a rabbit", 
  "Lo! rabbithood again"
].map { |phrase|
  puts phrase.gsub('rabbit', 'duck')
}

Mike
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