AMY FRANCIS – KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER

Why King?  Obviously, from my name, you can infer that I am a woman, so, wouldn’t I then be the “Queen” of the wild frontier?

Well, you know, I DO like the sound of that, even better than “King” but, it’s a language thing.  In our language and society (and maybe the world) the connotation of “king” is inherently superior to everyone, including the “queen” .  If you say “Chris is the king of tennis.” then you mean that Chris is the best tennis player.  If, however, you say “Chris is the Queen of tennis.”   You mean that Chris is the best tennis player among women.

But what if “Christine” were the best tennis player in the world?  Would you still refer to her as the “Queen” of tennis?  Well, that would certainly be true, but is she is also the “King”.

Douglas Hofstadter, in his essay “A Person Paper on Purity in Language” made the point quite strikingly, I highly recommend it.  It can be found in his book, “Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern”, a collection of the essays that he wrote for Scientific American in a column called “Metamagical Themas” which “replaced” the column Martin Gardner had previously written for the magazine.

“Metamagical Themas” is an anagram of “Mathematical Games” which was the title of Martin Gardner’s column in Scientific American.