List, Matt: Hmmm...
One must consider the facts of both the history of mathematics and the history of writing. The clay tablets from the 3 rd millennium BC show two types of symbols and calculations. One sort of symbol for numbers and another sort of symbol for objects (nouns.) (The tablets expressed sinsigns and indices). The number system was in base sixty and included both addition and multiplication operation. The sentence structure were primitive, if the markings could be called that. Many believe that the co-emergence of number symbol systems and sounded-based symbol systems was essential for social and cultural emergence. Governance requires taxes, then as now. (BTW, the British Museum has an excellent exhibit on this development.) Material terms eventually morph'ed into cuniform. Also, the symbol system for chemistry developed because the symbol systems for writing and for mathematics were inadequate to express chemical relations. Thus, the logic of relations of individual chemical structures based on physical measurements required the emergence of the chemical symbol system in the 19th century. John Dalton, a British Unitarian (1766 to 1844) was the initial architect of this discrete number system. CSP was motivated to search for the formal mathematical logic of the chemical symbol system. Different symbol systems can have co-extensive meanings for a cluster of symbols. Margolis's philosophical narrative should be fact-checked. Cheers Jerry from: http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago. They developed a writing system whose wedge-shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts in the same geographical area for the next 3000 years. Eventually, all of these diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform. It is actually possible to trace the long road of the invention of the Sumerian writing system. For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the clay tokens securely together (to prevent loss, theft, etc), so they started putting multiple clay tokens into a large, hollow clay container which they then sealed up. However, once sealed, the problem of remembering how many tokens were inside the container arose. To solve this problem, the Mesopotamians started impressing pictures of the clay tokens on the surface of the clay container with a stylus. Also, if there were five clay tokens inside, they would impress the picture of the token five times, and so problem of what and how many inside the container was solved. Subsequently, the ancient Mesopotamians stopped using clay tokens altogether, and simply impressed the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also added other symbols that were more pictographic in nature, i.e. they resemble the natural object they represent. Moreover, instead of repeating the same picture over and over again to represent multiple objects of the same type, they used diferent kinds of small marks to "count" the number of objects, thus adding a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols. Examples of this early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE, such as the one below. On Dec 14, 2015, at 11:02 PM, Matt Faunce wrote: > On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: >> List, >> >> The argument given in Matt's email below is problematic. I will raise a >> question and make a brief and casual effort to place a Peircian >> interpretation on symbolic communication in terms of current scientific >> terminology. >> >> While human language is a very powerful source of human communication, is it >> complete with regard to expressibility of information? >> >> I give two examples of what I consider to be the incompleteness of >> utterances as the sole source of the meaning of information. > > One idea is that music, science, and mathematics were only able to be born > because language enabled them. For this reason Joseph Margolis calls these > non-language sign systems lingual. That is, lingual systems are natural > extensions of language by encultured people. > > Matt > >> 1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the number of >> terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual symbols as units of >> the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the equation) for the message to be >> communicated. This is NOT the usual linear process extracting meaning of a >> written or spoken sentence. >> >> 2. A chemical icon (rheme) is even more difficult to interpret. The message >> emerges from a perception of its components, its arrangement of components >> and often, it role in the chemistry of life such as "DNA". It can requires >> a huge number of words (the name of each symbol) and ALL of the individual >> relations among them (bonding pattern) but also A QUANTITATIVE EXACT NAME >> for the specific entity. >> >> These two examples go to the very root of understanding the unity of human >> communication among two academic units - mathematics and chemistry. Musical >> symbols, as units, are less exact as the artist must interpret them, thereby >> adding information during a performance. >> >> Human communication CAN requires icons (in the traditional sense) with a >> countable number of terms (indices) that are visualizable and interpretable >> within the logical rules (legisigns) that can be formed from multiple >> premises (rhemata) and multiple possible arrangements (dicisigns) such that >> arguments can be made that are consistent with the individual members of a >> category (sinsigns), their proper attributes (qualisigns), and their common >> symbols in a symbol system designed for that purpose. >> >> (The preceding sentence strives to integrate the nine rather arbitrary >> terms of CSP into a meaningful thought.) >> >> The two examples above are both examples of the perplexity of artificial >> symbol systems that put exact and extreme requirements on the meaning of >> expressibility and completeness, the consistency of arguments and the >> logical soundness for the meaning of signs and symbols. >> >> Cheers >> >> Jerry >> >> >> >> >> On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 AM, Matt Faunce 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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