McEvoy was giving us an example of how he and Randy could 'deduce' (I think
it's McEvoy's word) the 'meaning' of a sign -- a complicated sign, if I
might say so -- it involves colours, shapes, and sizes --. McEvoy provides
this example as a defence of Popper's tirade against 'definitions', or shall
I say, demarcations. But Popper's claim to infame (as Geary calls it) is
his Abgrentzungkriterium, i.e. criterion of demarcation, to use the
vernacular.
And what is to demarcate but to define?
As Popper would note, to 'demarcate' is what linguists (Popper wasn't one)
call or define as a 'back-formation'. I.e. while Geary and Grice KNOW that
all nouns derive from verbs, in ENGLAND, they used 'demarcation', before
anyone cared to conjugate the verb! No wonder Popper was confused (He needed
the help of an Anglo-phone when he translated his Logik der Forschung).
"Abgrenzen" is NOT a back-formation, as linguists define it. "Demarcate" is.
Go figure.
The verb 'demarcate' is said to be transitive. This is a term used by
Russell in his theory of relations. A transitive relation is one symbolised as
D(x,y)
To demarcate can be given a conceptual analysis or definition. It is to
mark out or determine the boundary or limits of something. To demarcate can
also be used or be defined as to mark off, separate, or distinguish x from y.
It can also be defined as to mark or determine, as a boundary or limit of
something. Finally, to "demarcate" can be defined as "to define" something.
As it is logical to any Griceian, the verb was first used _physically_,
rather than implicaturally (imagine if implicatures came before explicatures!
that would be topsyturvydom in its worst Gilbertian embodiment).
"To demarcate" was thus used literally in reference to spatial limits, as
of territory.
Thus we read in M. Keating, "Trav." (1817) I. 214, but written in 1816:
"The marine deposits appear to demarcate its extreme undulation here."
This is Popperian avant la lettre since Popper would love the extreme
undulation and how to falsify the extremity of it all.
Some years later, it was used in St. James's Gaz. Apr. 1882, still
literally:
"The region thus demarcated is the only part of Wales described in
Domesday."
-- which is perhaps a good thing, this region being very small -- since
Domesday is the day of the final judgement, as Kant translated it.
We then read in The Pall Mall Gaz. of 9 June 1884 11/1, still literally:
"An Anglo-Russian Commission will proceed to demarcate the northern
frontier of Afghanistan."
-- in the days when Afghanistan was indeed, as the Pall Mall gazette
testifies, part of little England. ("The Russians should have no say in the
matter," the House of Lords had said -- but eventually a joint Anglo-Russian
joint committee was created.
After Keating used 'demarcate' literally, trust someone to 'go Griceian'
and invite an implicature, via metaphor, i.e. using 'demarcate' FIGURATIVELY
-- as Popper does, since 'science' is not like 'Afghanistan' (their
"logical or depth grammar" to use Witters's jargon is different).
"Demarcate" can be used figuratively in reference to *other* than spatial
limits. Enter Popper? Not yet.
In 1858, G. H. Lewes in his popular "Sea-side Studies", 314, woinders:
"How shall we demarcate Reproduction from Growth?"
There is a marginal note at the bottom of the page. "God knows" it reads.
A further marginal note to this note reads, in a different handwriting,
"And he is not tellin'ya!".
Just after 'demarcate' was used literally in the St. James's Gazette in
1882, trust the Athenæum, just to be opposite, to use 'demarcate'
figuratively, on 20 Jan. 1883, p. 79:
"Sharp distinctions of national flavour which demarcate one European
literature from another."
These sharp distinctions turned to be what Grice called 'languages'.
"I often notice," Grice once remarked, "that "French poet" can be
ambiguous. It can mean a poet who is French, but writes, says, in Arabic; or a
poet
who is an Arab but writes in French. Should we then deduce that we should
multiply the senses of "French poet"? No. We should go by Aristotelian
parsimony."
When Popper chose 'demarcate' and 'demarcation' to deal with science he
didn't know what he was getting into!
Cheers,
Speranza
Maurice E. Bunnell, APRN-BC
bunnell@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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