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Sunday, November 26, 2006
Malformed Philosophical Request
Earlier today I was looking something-or-other up (in fact some stuff on Adorno and identity) on the Online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – a very useful web-resource for philosophical neophytes such as myself. But this is the message their search-engine flashed up:
Your request appears to be malformed.
Please try another search.
There’s something simultaneously so elegant and so insulting about the particular styling of that error-message. I’m abashed, and a tad annoyed, and strangely thrilled by it. Malformed? Malformed? Was the software to this programme written by an actual philosopher, or by somebody with a grudge against philosophers? Do the thinkers of Stanford realise they’re being parodied like this? What’s wrong with a simple “No results found”?
It’s things like this give philosophy a bad name amongst hoi polloi, you know. (‘MALFORMED? I’ll malform you, philosophy boy --’)
Comments
What they mean is “Not a wff.”
I typed in the single word ‘identity’. How is that not a wff for a search engine?
"Identity” could apply to any possible article the search engine found. You’d need some less general properties if you wanted help finding some article in particular.
Did you say “Captain, may I?” Did you say “If you please, sir?” Did you say “Humbly request, sir?”
Philosophers are sticklers all the way up and down the line, and they’re punctilious too. They never relax their vigilence at any point, not even search engine design.
John: yes. I like the “...appears to be malformed ...” As if they can’t commit themselves with certainty on this matter in this, our sublunary world.
Is this Malformed cousin to Deformed?
Much Ado About Nothing, III, iii:
Borachio
Tush! I may as well say the fool’s the fool. But
seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion
is?Watchman
[Aside] I know that Deformed; a’ has been a vile
thief this seven year; a’ goes up and down like a
gentleman: I remember his name.
The reason that search engines sometimes return a syntax error rather than “no results found” is that some of them, like this one, allow more advanced searching. The “malformed request” or “syntax error” clues you in that you used reserved words or syntax in a way that’s not parseable by the search engine, so if you rewrite your query, you may get results.
I thought at first that maybe “identity” was a reserved word for this search engine, but after testing I notice that all queries are returning a syntax error, so there’s probably an issue with their python search script.
There is no identity without The Other, which you forgot to mention, so what could the search-engine do?
A search engine returning error messages to all possible requests sounds very philosophical indeed.
A Beckett-engine?
An anti-Turing machince?
Sounds like a Douglas Adams joke to me.
You know how to hurt a guy, C.
...but isn’t ‘malformed’ a lot more fun than ‘informed’? Some of my students seem to think so! ;)
The CP
The minor irony of all this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/