Matt, list, Can you give your source for this?
I cannot. I confess that my statement was not well-thought out. I did not mean to imply anything about the possibility of developing scientific terminology in any given human language. What I meant "about the development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific terminology" is thinking about the case of where we find ourselves today, in the state in which scientific terminology has actually developed to the point it has. Obviously not every human language in history has developed to the point of having the terminology that the sciences today command. For example, the use of Latin words for developing terms identifying species in biology, and the whole host of such terms that have been developed. Or the development of mathematical language to the point where physical theories like the general and special theories of relativity can be articulated. I take it for granted though that it is widely acknowledged that human languages do differ with respect to the rules of construction and the things that can be said. If there has not been a vocabulary established in a given language for discussing projective geometry, people speaking only that language won't be able to say things about it without going through the work of developing a system of terminology in order to say things about it, or by translating from another language. My essential point though was just to point out that trying to look to human language as a model for representing reasoning, or the subject matter of logic, is an ill-considered and ill-advised venture, precisely because there is so much difference between human languages. It's not as though a universal human language has been discovered by linguists, so I raised concerns about Sungchul's reliance on 'human language' as his model for representing reasoning. If one is to accept Sunchul's approach, we would have to admit that there are different kinds of reasoning, one for each human language, and logic would cease to be a general science of reasoning, and would become indistinguishable from linguistics. -- Franklin On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 5:08 AM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote: > > Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the > things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the > development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific > terminology is not a development shared by every human language. > > Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from > two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for > the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward Vajda > writes > > " Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity." > > "Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology > speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly > industrialized society. *There are no primitive languages*. Virtually > no linguist today would disagree with this statement." > > -- > Matt > > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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