Skepticism
There’s an old story about two men on a train. One of them, seeing some naked-looking sheep in a field, said, “Those sheep have just been sheared.’; The other looked a moment longer, and then said, “They seem to be — on this side.” It is in such a cautious spirit that we should say whatever we have to say about the workings of the mind.
John Holt, How Children Learn WP
And since we’re at it, I might as well show off my other train-and-grazing-animals-through-the-window joke:
Two Englishmen are going by train. A conversation isn’t getting on. The train passes a meadow, on which a herd of sheeps pastures. One of the passengers says:
— 1356.The other man is surprised, but gives no answer. In some time the train passes another pasture. The first passenger says:
— 1693.His neighbor brakes and asks:
— Sir, our train moves at speed 60 miles per hour. How can you count so quickly? — Oh, sir, it’s very simple! First I count a quantity of legs in a herd and then I divide this number by four.All Elementary Mathematics, New method of fast calculus
2 Comments
I would have to say that the sheep in the first story were sheared on more than just the visible side closer to 60% of the sheep or you would be able to see the cross section of hair/fur above the center line of the sheep.
And here’s an interesting twist on the joke:
An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field.“How interesting,” observed the astronomer, “All Scottish sheep are black!”
To which the physicist responded, “No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!”The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, “In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black.”