"fact" = notion or idea that has not been established as a fact or is not a fact

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 4/29/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I may have reported this very common SOTA perversion of sense and
> logic before, but here's an example that's hard to weasel out of:
>
>   1998 Carolyn Nordstrom "Deadly Myths of Aggression," in _Aggressive
> Behavior_  XXIV 152:  The people who inaugurate wars do not fight them,
> giving lie to the social fact that "wars explode."
>
>   Note too the form "give lie to."
>
>    Prof. Nordstrom holds a doctorate in anthropology from Berkeley.

And as such is undoubtedly referring to the Durkheimian notion of
"social fact". See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_fact
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Durkheim/SOCFACT.HTML
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/TheoryWeb/readings/DurkheimFactForm.html


--Ben Zimmer

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