Variable inheritance

[Alex Martelli]

"Roman Suzi" <rnd at onego.ru> wrote in message
news:mailman.990533131.26026.python-list at python.org...
> On 22 May 2001, Paul Foley wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 22 May 2001 11:58:34 +0400 (MSD), Roman Suzi wrote:
> >
> > > The badness of multiple inheritance is not bounded with the underlying
> > > language. It's bad design decision, because it artificially combines
two
> > > classes, which very rarely reflect real situation. (I can't even give
> >
> > Virtually every creature on earth more sophisticated than a bacterium
> > inherits from two parents :-)
>
> But it never happens between CLASSES of creatures ;-)

It happens all the time -- because classification is basically
never a taxonomy, in reality.  *Classes of interest are NOT
mutually exclusive* is the NORM.  Which is one typical failing
of "the IS of identity", as it SEEMS from "A is B" that there
follows "A is-not other-than-B"... but it doesn't:-).

"Flying Creature" vs "Swimming Creature" vs "Walking Creature"...
many creatures have multiple ways of locomotion.  Air-Breather
vs Water-Breather... ever heard of amphibians?-)

"Mammal" vs "Insect" vs "Bird" &c *AND* "Male" vs "Female".
What creature _doesn't_ "inherit" one from column A _and_
one from column B in this case?-)  Why, most PLANTS, which
are BOTH male and female -- and several animals have that
interesting trait to, often for different stages of life,
but not always.

Oh, and, if you're not interested in the metaphorical use
of 'inherit' to imply classification (and/or taxonomy),
but the literal one... it would seem it a REGULAR feature
over the aeons for some virus, or other piece of 'alien'
DNA, to wedge itself into a host's DNA.  If the combo is
not viable, natural selection disposes of it quickly.  When
it IS viable, all future descendants of that host will also
be descendants of that virus (or whatever).  This applies
to all of us many time over, it would appear (I'm not a
geneticist myself, nor do I play one on the net...:-).


Alex