[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Plant
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 15:18:48 -0800 (PST)
Who is Witters, I haven't met the guy ?
O.K.
On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 7:29 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
As Grice notes, an artificial flower is not a flower. But to keep using
scare quotes EVERY TIME (artificial 'flower') violates one of his
conversational maxims ('do not use scare quotes').
On the other hand, a dead plant is a plant. Is a plant.
We are discussing Wittgenstein's (or Witters's, as Austin prefers)
gardening abilities. R. Paul quotes a delightful quote from N. Malcolm,
"[...] You know nothing about plants."
Geary wonders
In a message dated 3/5/2014 1:13:48 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Yes, but was Witters referring to spies or to buildings where things are
manufactured? Makes a big difference. That's why I hate philosophy, it's
so demanding.
Indeed, we may have here a case of 'aequi-vocation', as Grice calls it
("Be reminded that 'aequi-' means 'equal' in Latin):
For Witters may have meant that Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm knew nothing about
different stuff.
-- and perhaps implicating that HE did.
The word 'plant' has been used in English for some time. Back in the day of
the Oxford English Dictionary, we would know that. Nowadays, what passes
for the OED is a "New English Dictionary", and earliest Anglo-Saxon records
are not given -- but there's the Toller/Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,
also published by Oxford University Press.
"plant" comes from Old English "plante", as used by King Alfred, to mean,
a "young tree or shrub, herb newly planted".
But the root is Latin, "planta", a "sprout, shoot, cutting" (source of both
Spanish planta and French plante).
Cicero suggests that the word is perhaps derived from "plantare", "to drive
in with the feet, push into the ground with the feet" and thus metonymic
for "planta", the "sole of the foot".
Ultimately, it's a nasalized form of Indo-European *plat-, meaning "to
spread, flat" (see "place" in English, which has the same root -- since surely
most places are flat -- cfr. Noel Coward, "Very flat, Norfolk").
Now, Witters could be using the expression in the broader usage to apply
to "any vegetable life, vegetation generally".
This is first recorded in 1553, and knowing that Witters liked an
archaism, it may well be what he meant (or implicated).
Most extended usages are, as Geary implies, from the verb, on the notion
of "something planted;" e.g. "construction for an industrial process".
This was first used in 1789, at first with reference to the set-up of
machinery, in later years also the building.
As Geary notes, it can also mean, in slang, "a spy" (First used in this
metaphorical usage in 1812).
Many of these follow similar developments in the French form of the word.
Incidentally German "Pflanz," (which is what Witters possibly had in his
German-spoken mind) and, for that matter, Irish "cland", and Welsh "plant"
are from Latin.
In any case, it seems exaggerated on Witters' part to assume that Mr. and
Mrs Malcolm knew _nothing_ about plants. What he meant is that he was a spy?
Cheers,
Speranza
"In his rooms at Trinity [Wittgenstein] kept a small, potted flowering
plant. When he left Cambridge between terms to go to Wales, he left the plant
at our house. I am afraid that we were negligent, sometimes leaving the
plant too near an electric heater. It began to look sickly and the leaves and
buds gradually dropped off. When Wittgenstein came back to Cambridge I
returned the plant to his rooms, although it was then quite dead. A few days
later he and my wife had a chance meeting on the street, the first since his
departure for Wales six weeks previously. Without any greeting he said
severely: ‘I see that you know nothing about plants!’ and walked off without
another word."
------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
