Is "an X is just an X, and it is Y that Z" a snowclone?

March 22, 2008 10:00 PM

In , "Molecular Ethology: an Immodest Proposal for Semantic Clarification", Heinz von Foerster says To escape this dilemma it is only necessary to recall that an urn is an urn, and it is animals that learn. Is this a reference to some other phrase (quotation, idiom, or otherwise) of the form "an X is just an X, and it is Y that Z"?

I ask because it shows up as the conclusion to one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard, and I might be more slightly more forgiving if he's just trying to be funny. I got suspicious because it's the only phrase in the paper that rhymes.

Things I do not think he is referencing:
1) Gertrude Stein: Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
2) Sigmund Apocryphal Freud: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
3) Plutarch by way of Erasmus the Not-very-good-with-Greek: ...calling a fig a fig, and a spade a spade
4) Louis Armstrong: A kiss is still a kiss; a sigh is just a sigh

posted by ErWenn to writing & language (6 comments total)

Whenever I hear "urn" I think of Browne's Urn Burial. I don't think it's going to do any good here, but I mention it for completeness.

"But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature."
posted by Leon at 9:15 AM on March 23

Is he perhaps referring to the concept of a well-wrought urn, usually used to refer to Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn? Foerster could be playing with Keats's last lines. Thou refers to the urn:

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

He could be saying that objects like the urn in fact communicate nothing, but that animals can learn to endow them with meanings. Does that fit the rest of the paper?

The concept of a "well-wrought urn" is also central to New Criticism and comes up a lot in arguments about interpretation theory. He could be making fun of these debates.
posted by whimwit at 9:57 AM on March 23

Urne in German can either mean urn or coffin in English. A Google search for "a coffin is a coffin" reveals at least one source.
posted by fatllama at 10:03 AM on March 23

He's actually making a (really stupid, in my opinion) argument about a particular experiment that fails to distinguish between the distribution of responses of an animal learning to give a desired response and the distribution arising from the random selection (without replacement) of colored balls from an urn. He reasons that this underlying models that lead us to make experiments like this lead to either the conclusion that the urn is learning or that the animal is not. His resolution to the dilemma is the rhyming quotation in question, effectively claiming that we just know the difference, and then he moves on to come up with what he believes is a better model for learning (which is stupid for reasons unrelated to my question). I took him to task for this ridiculous argument (amidst pages and pages of bizarre mathematical formalism) in a term paper that I was writing, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't just missing out on some really obvious joke that flew over my head because it was written 38 years ago or because I'm dense. His tone seems utterly serious to me, but it's hard to tell in print.

So if it's a reference to Keats, it's not one that's going to make me look like an idiot for overlooking.

I expect that if it is a reference, it's not due to the fact that he used the word "urn," but probably just the form of the sentence.
posted by ErWenn at 12:25 PM on March 23

Urn Problem (FWIW)
posted by Leon at 1:38 PM on March 23

... meaning his argument is similar to the "Beer can" argument about cognition?
posted by fatllama at 3:21 PM on March 23