The Universe of Discourse : Seven books I keep close because I love them
The Universe of Discourse
Mark Dominus (陶敏修)
mjd@pobox.com
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Seven books I keep close because I love them<br>The road to epsilon-zero: Infinite Nim as a coin-moving game<br>“Steph Curry: fluke or breakthrough” ten years later<br>The road to epsilon-zero: Nim always ends, even with infinite ordinals<br>The road to epsilon-zero: ordinals as nim-heaps<br>Starting to understand epsilon-zero<br>It's our language now!<br>I owe my life to a 1913 road rage incident<br>Deciphering basmala<br>My 1992 view of the problems of computer programming in 1992<br>Egyptian fraction multiplication<br>Update: Here I am at the Sagrada Família
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Sun, 02 Aug 2026
Seven books I keep close because I love them
The bookshelf by my elbow, the one that I can reach without getting<br>up, has seven books on it, not necessarily the ones I look in the<br>most, but the ones whose emanations I most hope will infuse me as I<br>write.
Roget's Thesaurus (4th edition)
The one I actually refer to most often is the Harper and Row Roget's<br>Thesaurus. I thought I had acquired this in my teens, but the note<br>on the flyleaf says 1989.
This is the fourth edition. I was very excited to get the eighth<br>edition, which I thought I might like better, and for some time I kept<br>them next to each other so that I could look up the same things in<br>both, and compare. my conclusion was that while the eighth edition<br>had more stuff in it, it wasn't stuff I needed. And it is really fat.<br>So I have retired it to a farther shelf and will eventually get rid of<br>it.
The thesaurus is a book that is widely misunderstood. It is not, as many people mockingly<br>imagine, just a compendium of synonyms, and its correct and intended<br>use is not to replace common words with more impressive-sounding<br>ones. just as the correct use of a screwdriver is not to scrape the<br>veneer off of an expensive cabinet.
“Thesaurus” means “storehouse" or “treasure room”. Roget's idea,<br>similar to that of John Wilkins before him, was to classify everything<br>in the world into a hierarchy, in this case a hierarchy with a<br>thousand divisions. At the top level the divisions are grouped into<br>"Abstract concepts", "Space”, “Physics”, “Matter”, “Sensation” and so<br>on. Then under “abstract concepts” there are subclasses, of which<br>subclass VI is “Time”, subdivided into five smaller sections:
A. Absolute time
B. Relative time
C. Time with reference to age
D. Time with reference to season
E. Recurrent time
At the next level down, section (1)(VI)(B) is divided into:
§116. Priority
§117. Posteriority
§118. Simultaneity
§119. The Past
§120. The Present
§121. The Future
Roget's idea is that if you are thinking or writing about time, and<br>specifically about how it goes by, you will leaf through those<br>sections for inspiration, not to find a more pompous way of expressing<br>something you have already written, but to refine your own idea of<br>what it is you wanted to express.
Perhaps you are trying to say that one event followed immediately<br>after another. You might look at “§117 posteriority (later time)”<br>which mentions “ensue”, “consequence”, “aftermath”, and “subsequent” —<br>not synonyms, but related aspects of similar concepts, worth more or<br>less consideration depending on what you are trying to emphasize.<br>§117 will also suggest common phrases like “step into the shoes of” —<br>not a synonym by any means, but a related idea. This is probably not<br>what you wanted in this case, but it in another it might be just the<br>thing, and in any case it might give you a bright idea.
If nothing in section 117 seems suitable, it is right next to “§116<br>priority”, and you might discover that instead of saying that the<br>second event followed immediately after the first, you would rather<br>say that the first immediately preceded the second. Or perhaps you<br>realize, looking at “§118 Simultaneity”, that what you really want<br>to say is that the two event were not quite simultaneous. Or<br>perhaps, finding your way to “§131 Earliness” and “§132 Lateness” you<br>realize that your meaning would be more clearly expressed if you said<br>that the second event was a little tardy, or that the first event was<br>premature.
Looking through the index for “immediately” you will see that the<br>index distinguishes several...