[lit-ideas] Re: Gripes
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 21 Aug 2004 15:51:39 PDT
MIKE. GEARY:
I heard Peter Gordon being interviewed on Science Friday yesterday and I was at
a loss as to why this was news. "No word, no concept" has always seemed
a no-brainer to me. Aren't words just symbols of concepts? If there's no
symbol, it's a pretty safe bet there's no concept.
RP:
This is ambiguous, I think, between there being no single word or phrase that
denotes a concept (if there are concepts) and there being a way to express the
concept in a roundabout way. Examples: _Treppenwitz_ and _esprit d'escalier_.
Both denote the state of sudden realization that one should have made an apt or
witty comment or riposte to something said at a social gathering, but it's too
late (hence the stairs--one is already leaving).
I think I can explain this concept after a fashion in the way I usually try to
describe parts and fittings and tools to a clerk in a hardware store: 'You know,
it sorta' bends down here, like this, and then it kinda' has a little opening
over here, like a, well, more like a...' And surely if someone understood the
English unpacking of either the French or the German expression, she would have
the requisite concept, for which there is no real _name_ in English. Some
concepts are less easy to explain--'being in the zone,' in sports might be one.
Just having the expression doesn't do much, nor would a cumbersome attempt at
paraphrase. You have to be in the zone before you understand 'in the zone.'
M. GEARY:
The intriguing question then is how do concepts arise within a culture.
Apparently not through language (but note the "apparently"). Language always
only mirrors. Of course there are carnival mirrors that warp and distort our
concepts into new realities -- literature is often such a mirror, so too is most
of what goes under the rubric "Liberal Arts and Humanities".
RP:
I wonder if 'language' and 'culture' (not a concept with Frege-pleasing sharp
boundaries) are really separable. 'To imagine a language is to imagine a form of
life,' as the Philosopher said. Would we have _l'esprit d'escalier_ if there had
been no dinner parties, no salons, no settings where conversation flowed and
bons mots (q.v.) were prized (if and the houses, apartments, and townhouses
where they were held had no stairs to negotiate)? Well, absent the stairs, one
might have the concept but it wouldn't be denoted by either the German word or
the French phrase; absent social gatherings there would be no such concept (or
so one might suppose).
Robert Heinlein (I think) coined the word 'grokking' for a kind of wordlessly
communicated understanding. But he must have had the concept first: 'I've just
thought of this word (noise?) "grok"; now what shall I use it for?' sounds
unlikely. But in _A Hard Day's Night_, the word _grotty_ is apparently not only
introduced into the language but the concept is introduced into the culture (as
a cousin of 'grotesque').
M. GEARY:
Concepts, I conjecture, arise out of cultural need primarily, and secondarily
out of play.
RP:
There are the things people do and there are the things people say about what
they do. It's hard to imagine people navigating large ships out of sight of land
without being able to understand orders and requests that are specific to this
sort of thing, even harder to imagine that they have only the relevant concepts
and no way to express them. But having said this, I immediately have an
inarticulate sympathy for the language-needing folks who did things first: the
initial idea of rigging a sail cannot have had the form 'Suppose one were to rig
a sail, attach it to a mast...etc.' Words and concepts whichever order they
have, originate in a void, or in the analogue of the Builders' world in $A42 of
the Philosophical Investigations.
Aristotle did not have the concept 'substance in which the electrons are loosely
bound, relative to other substances.' But he knew what metal was.
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
