Ha! Nick, you DO understand computer science: Duck Typing has been popular
as a way of describing loosely typed dynamic languages. I guess to be fair
I'll start calling it Peirce Typing.
-- Owen
On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Nicholas Thompson <
nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Glen, John,
>
> A really interesting exchange. It feeds into my conversation with my
> Peirce
> Mentor about science being at its root experimentation and experimentation
> being, at its root, poking the world with a stick. ("It walks like a duck,
> it quacks like a duck. Does it squawk like a duck? [poke!] Yes. It's a
> duck!") I render this in language, but the whole thing could be done
> without language at all, unless one is one of those people who insists that
> all thought is in language.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 9:42 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] science and language (was How do forces work?)
>
>
> That's a _great_ counterfactual suggestion, to imagine science without
> language. The way I see it, science consists of transpersonal behaviors.
> I know this definition is (almost) peculiar to me. Sorry about that.
> But science is unrelated to thought at all. It's all about methods and
> getting other people to do what you do.
>
> And if we can imagine that language is somehow related to grooming, e.g.
> the reason humans usually don't lick their fingers and wipe smudges from
> each others' faces on a regular basis is because our language has obviated
> most of that behavior. We've replaced grooming with moving our jaws up and
> down and emitting complex sequences of grunts.
>
> If we can imagine that, and temporarily accept that science is unrelated to
> thought, then perhaps we can imagine a language-less science? I suspect it
> would be similar to the apprenticeship model for education.
> It might also be similar to the ritualistic oral traditions of people like
> the Celts.
>
> But the problem I'm having imagining it comes down to the definition of
> language. To what extent is abstraction (symbol manipulation) necessary
> for
> us to call something a "language"? At bottom, I think it boils down to the
> ability to _point_ at things, which requires the ability to see, an
> appendage with which to point, and the neurological structures to empathize
> (put yourself in the pointer's shoes). This strikes me as the root of
> language. If so, a harder counterfactual is:
>
> Can we imagine science without the ability to point at things?
>
> I think the answer to that is, "No." But as long as we have that root,
> regardless of the structure and dynamic that might grow from that root, I
> think the answer is "Yes, science can exist without the implementation
> details of what we now call language."
>
>
>
> John Kennison wrote at 04/22/2013 06:49 AM:
> > My first thought was that we would first need language -without
> > language it is hard to imagine what consensus would look like and hard
> > to imagine science. How could we say that an experiment disproved a
> > hypothesis, or even that one experiment is a repetition of another?
> > But without consensus, how do we get language? Maybe science and
> > language develop in tandem, --assuming we are programmed to believe
> > that gestures and vocal sounds mean something --which can be
> > determined through experimentation. This would explain why science
> > seems to start with unsophisticated statements such as "Objects tend
> > to fall in a downward direction." And why it seems necessary, when
> > grappling with new, abstract scientific (and mathematical) ideas to
> > reduce them to simpler statements involving ideas we are already
> > comfortable with. And Russ's question might be part of what is needed
> > to understand abstract concepts of modern Physics. In 1962 I had a
> > grad course in quantum mechanics (given by the Math Dept). It started
> > with a discussion of motion in the physical world and a look at some
> > of the questions we would ask. But very soon we adopted the axiom that
> > the set of all questions was isomorphic to the set of all closed
> > subspaces of a Hilbert space. Even the instructor admitted that this
> > was a bit hard to swallow, but once we swallowed all would eventually
> > become clear. I learned a lot about operators on a Hilbert space and
> > even got an A in the course, but I never connected it to any ideas I
> > had about the physical world.
>
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com There is all the
> difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to
> make them equal. -- F.A. Hayek
>
>
> --
> =><= glen e. p. ropella
> The suckers giving up their souls
>
>
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