On 6/4/10 11:32 AM, Billy wrote:
In article ,
"David E. Ross" wrote:

See my http://www.rossde.com/garden/garden_organic.html

Urea isn't artificial. Most people excrete it everyday, you may be
different.

Then you blend the technical language of chemistry with the common
language that most people communicate in. Ever talk to a lawyer and
notice that common words suddenly take on a different significance?

Malathion has carbon to carbon bonds, which to a chemist means that it
is an organic molecule. Talk to an agronomist, and they'll tell you that
it isn't organic, because it doesn't occur naturally. The chemist and
the agronomist are talking in two different technical languages, most of
us don't speak technically without qualifying the framework in which we
speak first.

Organic
3. denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit
together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole
----
This definition in your exposition seems to have escaped you, as you
confuse the technical with the common.

Good work on confusing the neophytes.

The neophytes were already confused. They have long been confusing
"organic" with "natural".

The quote from Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass" at the top of
my cited Web page is quite relevant to this discussion:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."


The last sentence of my first paragraph on that page is equally relevant:
After all, I am trying to grow plants that do not exist in nature,
in a garden where the natural soils and other components of the
environment would be hostile either to these unnatural plants or
to their natural ancestors.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening diary at http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary