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Jobb Posted 21 years ago
Grammar
Failure and success
Context:
I think I was still smarting from the news about the Mission to Saturn and the finding that one of the important experiments (in the atmospheric winds, I think) had failed. It was one of many other experiments that were successful. This particular experiment had taken 80 man-years of work, including 18 dogged & now-wasted years by a single man. The reason it failed was simple. Mission Control in all its scientific wonder "forgot" to turn on the program. I feel a lot of sympathy for that man.
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I wonder whether the first sentence is contradicting the second. First sentence runs: "the important experiments had failed", ad second comes with " It was one of many other experiments that were successful." What does "it" in the second refer to?
I think I was still smarting from the news about the Mission to Saturn and the finding that one of the important experiments (in the atmospheric winds, I think) had failed. It was one of many other experiments that were successful. This particular experiment had taken 80 man-years of work, including 18 dogged & now-wasted years by a single man. The reason it failed was simple. Mission Control in all its scientific wonder "forgot" to turn on the program. I feel a lot of sympathy for that man.
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I wonder whether the first sentence is contradicting the second. First sentence runs: "the important experiments had failed", ad second comes with " It was one of many other experiments that were successful." What does "it" in the second refer to?
Top answer
You are right, Jobb-- not contradictory, perhaps, but certainly unclear, and the paragraph seems to be generally poorly written. 'It' of course is intended to refer to the failed experiment, but it is awkward to try to place the failed one into the group of successful ones. '
- You are right, Jobb-- not contradictory, perhaps, but certainly unclear, and the paragraph seems to be generally poorly written.
- 'It' of course is intended to refer to the failed experiment, but it is awkward to try to place the failed one into the group of successful ones.
- '
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4 Answers
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You are right, Jobb-- not contradictory, perhaps, but certainly unclear, and the paragraph seems to be generally poorly written. 'It' of course is intended to refer to the failed experiment, but it is awkward to try to place the failed one into the group of successful ones. More clear would be something like this:
'It was one of many experiments, the others of which were successful.'
'It was one of many experiments, the others of which were successful.'
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X [is / was] one of many others.
I don't think this formulation even follows the rules of logic!
How can X be one of a certain group when that group consists of those things which are the others, i.e., the things that are not X?
There are more than 3,000 instances of it on Google. Go figure.
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I just had an "aha" moment. "other" means "more" or "additional" in this expression, not "remaining" or "different".
X is one of many additional (X's). It is one among many of its kind.
Never mind.
X is one of many additional (X's). It is one among many of its kind.
Never mind.
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