“Electrical connections,” Gallegher mused, cocking an inquisitive eye. “The raw dirt goes in that one-time waste-basket. Then what? Electronic bombardment? Protons, neutrons, positrons—I wish I knew what those words meant,” he ended plaintively. “If only I’d had a college education!”
“A positron is—”
“Don’t tell me,” Gallegher pleaded. “I’ll only have semantic difficulties. I know what a positron is, all right, only I don’t identify it with that name. All I know is the intensional meaning. Which can’t be expressed in words, anyhow.”
“The extensional meaning can, though,” Narcissus pointed out.
“Not with me. As Humpty Dumpty said, the question is, which is to be master. And with me it’s the word. The damn things scare me. I simply don’t get their extensional meanings.”
“That’s silly,” said the robot. “Positron has a perfectly clear denotation.”
“To you. All it means to me is a gang of little boys with fishtails and green whiskers. That’s why I never can figure out what my subconscious has been up to. I have to use symbolic logic, and the symbols… ah, shut up,” Gallegher growled. “Why should I argue about semantics with you, anyhow?”
“You started it,” Narcissus said.
Gallegher glared at the robot and then went back to the cryptic machine. It was still eating dirt and playing “St. James Infirmary.”
“Why should it sing that, I wonder?”