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Do things exist prior to their "creation"? YES | 661 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

Do things exist prior to their "creation"? YES

Authored by: Wol on Sunday, March 31 2013 @ 07:38 AM EDT

Yesterday I came across (here?) a reference to Asimov's "The Last
Question". So I looked it up on Wikipedia. It says it was one of Asimov's
favourites among his own stories, and the "why" is very interesting
here.

The story came to Asimov in one piece. He just wrote it in a single "stream
of consciousness". And it needed almost NO refining or tidying up once he'd
written it.

So, yes, things CAN exist before their legal "creation". The law has
defined the moment of creation to be the point at which something is recorded on
some form of media, but this story clearly existed before then. Indeed, in
societies with aural traditions, stories can have existed for centuries before
they are legally "created". What about the Grimm fairy tales?

At the end of the day, the law needs a convenient "point in time" -
any choice of which is arbitrary - and this is what has been chosen.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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