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FORMLESS_EMBRYO
September 24, 2018
October 15, 2020
H.G. Wells, "A Modern Utopia" (1905):
"We need suppose no linguistic impediments to intercourse.
The whole world will surely have a common language, that is
quite elementarily Utopian, and since we are free of the
trammels of convincing story-telling, we may suppose that
language to be sufficiently our own to understand. Indeed,
should we be in Utopia at all, if we could not talk to
everyone? That accursed bar of language, that hostile
inscription in the foreigner's eyes, 'deaf and dumb to you,
sir, and so--your enemy,' is the very first of the defects
and complications one has fled the earth to escape."
BABEL-17
Wells argues against the new Scientific Language gang, and in the
process helps fill us in on the kinds of things those guys were
saying. In the days before Loglan/Lojban, this is how the patter
went:
"You would begin to talk of scientific languages, of
Esperanto, La Langue Bleue, New Latin, Volapuk, and Lord
Lytton, of the philosophical language of Archbishop
Whateley, Lady Welby's work upon Significs and the like. You
would tell me of the remarkable precisions, the
encyclopaedic quality of chemical terminology, and at the
word terminology I should insinuate a comment on that
eminent American biologist, Professor Mark Baldwin, who has
carried the language biological to such heights of
expressive clearness as to be triumphantly and invincibly
unreadable. (Which foreshadows the line of my defence.)"
And that foreshadowing makes it clear Wells thinks this is all nonsense.
"You make your ideal clear, a scientific language you demand,
without ambiguity, as precise as mathematical formulae, and
with every term in relations of exact logical consistency
with every other."
And that's the point that Bertrand
Russell objected to-- as a practical
matter, he couldn't get himself to
believe it was possible to have a
word for every concept: we
necessarily re-use words with
different meanings (some of them very Russell also made the point that
individual and idiosyncratic) and each individual can easily have a
distinguish between them by context. different "concept" associated
with a word. A completely
"It will be a language unambiguous vocabulary necessarily
with all the inflexions requires everyone to share
of verbs and nouns identical meanings, as well as
regular and all its identical symbols.
constructions inevitable,
each word clearly LOGICAL_LANGUAGE
distinguishable from
every other word in sound
as well as spelling."
That much, at least, we could probably do better with
than, say, English does... though it's interesting
that English hasn't evolved further in that direction
all on it's own. If the cognitive limitations of
the irregularities of English were really so big, I
would think we would do away with some of them
naturally without any clean-up campaigns.
" ... It implies that the whole
intellectual basis of mankind is
established, that the rules of
logic, the systems of counting
and measurement, the general
categories and schemes of
resemblance and difference, are
established for the human mind So Wells was an Auguste
for ever--blank Comte-ism, in Comte hater. That's
fact, of the blankest mildly surprising...
description."
I hadn't realized
I'm not sure I follow the claim that Comte claimed
that human understanding must that the age of
be static if the language was research was over
perfectly standardized... I and all that could be
would think there would be ways known was known.
around this, e.g. a process for
tentative assignment of new In fact, the
words to new concepts, and a accusation
"standards body" process to sounds suspicious.
decided which should be brought
into the language proper. AUGUSTE_COMTE
It could be a problem if advances in
understanding of logic itself
deviated from the understanding built
into the language.
"But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole
framework of philosophical thought men have kept since
the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential
permanence as a final expression of the human mind,
than the Scottish Longer Catechism."
I grok not the reference, but I fear Wells
may exaggerate the grand progress since
Aristotle... but then, it's not like there
hasn't been some, so...
"Amidst the welter of modern thought, a philosophy
long lost to men rises again into being, like some
blind and almost formless embryo, that must presently What?
develop sight, and form, and power, a philosophy in
which this assumption is denied."
"[Footnote: The serious reader may refer at
leisure to
You've got Sidgwick
Sidgwick's Use of Words in Reasoning and Sigwart's on your
side--
(particularly), and to
Bosanquet's Essentials of Logic,
and Bradley's Principles of Logic,
Sigwart's Logik;
the lighter minded may read and mark the temper of
Professor Case in the British Encyclopaedia,
article Logic (Vol. XXX.).
I have appended to his book a rude sketch of a
philosophy upon new lines, originally read by me
to the Oxford Phil. Soc. in 1903.]"
Say what?
"The language of Utopia will no doubt be one and indivisible;
all mankind will, in the measure of their individual differences
in quality, be brought into the same phase, into a common
resonance of thought, but the language they will speak will
still be a living tongue, an animated system of imperfections,
which every individual man will infinitesimally modify."
Right, but like I said... we modern computer
programmer types all work with standardized That's my "modern"
"languages" which are extensible by design, not Wells' "modern"--
and over time our experiments are often firmed the proper jargon
up into standard features... these days may be
"contemporary".
"Through the universal freedom of exchange and
movement, the developing change in its general When we get to the
spirit will be a world-wide change; that is the post-contemporary
quality of its universality. I fancy it will be era, you'll know
a coalesced language, a synthesis of many." it's all over.
It's enough to
And here, Wells jukes to drive one to
the left on us again: Esperanto.
A universal tongue awaits,
just not a universal design.
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