|
[It is probably more illuminating to] go a little further back, to the Middle Ages. One of its characteristics was that "reasoning by analogy" was rampant; another characteristic was almost total intellectual stagnation, and we now see why the two go together. A reason for mentioning this is to point out that, by developing a keen ear for unwarranted analogies, one can detect a lot of medieval thinking today. // On the Cruelty of Teaching Computing Science, E.W.Dijkstra, EWD1036-0.
|