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Re: Interesting analogies...

Jamie Rose wrote:
his one sentence ... she was 'dis-charge-d' of the
electricity -and- 'discharged' -from hospital-.

He meant only 'from the hospital', but the
other fit perfectly as well in its own
entwined context group.

This precious gem of language extensions mirrors
the trails and paths of meaning groups, qualia groups,
and all their blended involvements --

Are you sure he only meant "from the hospital"??? That was the kind of pun my father could be expected to come up with! He was very quick with one-liners. When he was diagnosed (at the age of 45) with type one diabetes, his new lady doctor said to him; "Have you accepted it yet?" His response; "I didn't realize it was an option." A friendship was born then that lasted to the end of his life, although sadly she was a doctor in Nova Scotia and couldn't help him here.

Anyway, thank you for illustrating so well one of the salient points I was trying to get across in my post-- that entailment patterns repeat in all sorts of different settings-- which is just what we would expect if it is the relational aspects which cause the patterns, rather than the material ingredients. Human languages are complex systems, as is the language of mathematics (in its entirety). This is a very good analogy to work with, in fact.

Written language is created, ultimately, out of an alphabet. Any alphabet is a finite set of symbols, each with their own finite set of rules. Yet, from that finite set infinite relations could be created, although the options are somewhat constrained by the next imposition of rules; grammatical rules. However, the relational possibilities remain vast and systems made up of symbols and relations (words) can be generated to describe anything. Even so, single words can often still be rather limited in their ability to convey many aspects of what human beings perceive, experience, or imagine. So, we connect words to each other via relations (which are further constrained by more grammatical rules) to better describe events, thoughts, ideas, etc. and language is born.

It's interesting how languages are referred to as "living" or "dead/extinct," even though they're not actually alive in the sense an organism is alive. Languages are also said to "evolve" although, again, I think that's a misapplication of the term. To my mind, human beings evolve, and as we do so, we create new relational interactions in our languages to better convey new contextual elements of life and thought. Regardless, though... the notions of proximate analysis and ultimate analysis from chemistry applied to language are a wonderful illustration of the fact that entailment patterns repeat across venues. The differences between the results of both forms of analysis, in language, mirrors the same situation found in chemical analysis. I wonder who had the wisdom to come up with the procedure for finding "proximate cause"? He (or she) obviously recognized the limits of using purely reductionist approaches to do science with and created alternate modes, along with (I would imagine) methods for discerning when it is inappropriate to use "ultimate analysis".

The analogy between linguistics and chemistry extends pretty far. For example, from what we have been able to determine, there are a limited number of pure elements in our little cranny of the universe. That puts the elements into a position analogous to the alphabet of a language. The role of relations as ingredients of any system created out of elemental pieces is also analogous. Depending on the nature of those systemic relations, there are both systems of simple organization and of complex organization. In chemical analysis, it was recognized that it is not useful to break down complex systems and that's what fascinates me the most. They may not have recognized why it wasn't useful, or even asked the question (never mind followed the logic to find the reasons), but at least there was a recognition and a set of practical alternatives was generated to be used in such cases. If the analogy I'm building between language and chemistry holds, there will be cases in language where it is not useful to break down certain constructions because too much relational information is lost that way. I think this is true, in fact. So, the process, in chemistry, of "proximate analysis" should be applicable to language and could prove very useful in areas like translation between languages, teaching and learning new languages, and in areas where languages are digitized.

Nifty stuff!

Judith




Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science based on the Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm
On Nov 4, 2005, at 10:28 PM, James N Rose wrote:

I heard a wonderful story on NPR radio today.
>From the StoryCorps project where anyone can go
in to their nationwide recording booths and
record memories and mementoes of our American
human-experiences.

The one NPR aired this moring was from a
physician who remembered his days as a resident
doing 'rounds' in the wards. As a laugh for a
birthday present his family had given him a
bow-tie that lit up when he pressed a secret button
in his pocket. He thought it was the sillies/dumbest
thing and just tossed it in his knickknack drawer
at home.

Some time later there was a little old Italian woman
in hospital who was convinced she was full of electricity
and was suffering all sorts of symptoms .. which none of the
attending doctors could resolve her of.

This resident came in wearing the bowtie one day and
as they came to the lady, he stepped forward and
put his hand on her forehead and urged her to
"push the electricity" out of her body, into him
and he would try to take away the 'stuff' she was
suffering from.

After a few minutes where she was struggling to focus
what-ever it was, out of her and in to him, he pressed
the button, the tie glowed and the woman gleefully
exclaimed, "THERE-A, all-a these electric eese a
finally out-a me!! You wunderful, Doctor!"

The story teller then made this closing remark
to his recording: "She was discharged that day."

I roared with laughter when I heard that! :-)



pause a moment .. think about entailments and
multi-entanglements and connections....

his one sentence ... she was 'dis-charge-d' of the
electricity -and- 'discharged' -from hospital-.

He meant only 'from the hospital', but the
other fit perfectly as well in its own
entwined context group.

This precious gem of language extensions mirrors
the trails and paths of meaning groups, qualia groups,
and all their blended involvements --

When have convenient categories to keep things with
similar properties, grouped and clustered together.

But existence and organization is anything -but-
clean disparate clusterings of ideal qualia.



Welcome to the wonderfulness of a messy universe.
Patterns dominate but everything touches everything else.

:-)


Jamie
2005/11/04