confirm any theory

[navi]

Are all of these sentences meaningful:

1) You can find a supposedly academic paper to confirm any theory you
want.
2) You can find a supposedly academic paper that confirms any theory you
want.

3) You can find a supposedly academic paper to confirm any theory.
4) You can find a supposedly academic paper that confirms any theory.

Do '1' and '2' mean the same?
Do '3' and '4' mean the same?



--
Gratefully,
Navi

Lost in the Twilight Zone of the English language
Obsessed with ambiguity
Interested in strange structures

[Mike Spencer]

Post by navi
1) You can find a supposedly academic paper to confirm any theory you
want.
2) You can find a supposedly academic paper that confirms any theory you
want.
3) You can find a supposedly academic paper to confirm any theory.
4) You can find a supposedly academic paper that confirms any theory.
Do '1' and '2' mean the same?
Do '3' and '4' mean the same?

1) carries an implication of agency or possibly meretricious intent in
the "finding". 2) implies that a paper so found does in fact
confirm as desired.

Digressing egregiously on approaches to academic confirmation :

1. Everything is normally distributed (The Bell Curve)

2. Everything is sigmoid (Diminishing returns)

3. Everything is sinusoidal (Goes in cycles)

5. Everything is stochastic (Completely random and unpredictable)

6. Everything is fractal (It's turtles all the way down)

7. Everything is chaotic (Deterministic but unpredictable)

8. Everything is a metaphor (The PoMo option, for the math challenged)


None of these universals is true, of course, but you can write a nice
academic paper on almost anything assuming one of them and then
demonstrating that the assumption is or is not justified. If you can't
spin a PhD thesis out of one of these, you may need to invoke:

9. Shit happens (The Dada, holistic, artistic option)