terminological obscurity

[Arthur]

On 01 Jun 2004 19:39:01 -0400, Heather Coppersmith <me at privacy.net>
wrote:

>My criterion for homogeneity is "what happens if I shuffle these
>elements?"  By this criterion, that list of elements in the World
>*is* homogeneous, regardless of the types or the contents of the
>data (unless the defaults and/or overrides are somehow cumulative
>or implicitly ordered).

Not in this case, but generally:

I rely on the sequencing of lists, since I rely on a order to events
on the iteration of elements.  Shuffle my list, and I break.

I do tend to think of a list as a sequence, not a collection.

>
>OTOH, an individual element's spatial coordinates (be they X, Y,
>Z; rho, phi, theta; or something else) are heterogeneous because
>if I shuffle them, then the object shows up in a different place
>(certain degenerate symmetry cases notably excepted).

But assuming your case holds firmly, why are we filtering the
significance of ordering - if that is the distinction - throught the
words homogenous and hetereogenous.  Why do we not speck directly
about the signficance of ordering.  In the interest of least action.

Art

>
>Regards,
>Heather