On 5/4/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Fully agreed there. We could write -an article- on the speed of light without ever numerically specifying that speed. We could write -an article- on the United States without putting in its population as of the last census. But while we could indeed write such articles, they are not comprehensive or complete.
Your analogies are poor. An accurate analogy for this situation would be, for example, an article on legal proceedings where the names of some of the parties have been suppressed by the court. A perfectly comprehensive article could be written about the legal proceedings without the need to break the law and use the names.