vol 7: Notes
2004
12 September
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Notes
[Notebook: Language DB 57]
[Sunday 12 September 2004 - Saturday 18 September 2004]
Sunday 12 September 2004
Monday 13 September 2004
Tuesday 14 September 2004
Wednesday 15 September 2004
[page 1]
Thursday 16 September 2004
Back from an interesting and thought provoking trip which centered on the preservation of the ancient languages and culture (stories) of the Aboriginal people living in and around Ngukurr. I can see another opening into academia. The first step is to take the MA in linguistics offered by USE and then spend enough time living among the Aboriginal people to get a reasonable grasp of their stories about the experiences of existence.
A common feature of these stories is that they are represented in language, spoken and 'written' ... as oral literature, music, dance, graphic art and so on. Here we consider language and art to be coterminous (better undifferentiated) a notion we capture in the sentences language is the art of communication; art is the language of communication.
Theology, like all other -ologies, is devoted to developing and communicating a certain set of models of the world. To do this it has over the centuries developed an expression of the nature of god in every language that has existed among humans since out time began. Since a theological model of the world has considerable practical import in the work of survival, and since the Aboriginal peoples of the world have survived for many millennia with what appear to have been substantially unchanging theological stories, we may hypothesize that these stories have considerable survival value in the environment in which these people lived.
[page 2]
Universal language embraces all particular languages. Linguists study many languages in order to identify common features and interesting differences between individual languages. It has been found through the study of similarities that languages fit an evolutionary tree in a way somewhat analogous to the tree of biological inheritance.
At the most general level of such study we have theories of abstract language devised by people like Chomsky. Chomsky It is at this level of generality that we want to introduce the transfinite network and substantiate (instantiate) it in all the -ologies from theology to physics. Here we find that language and linguistics are formally identical, even though language is concrete (cultural) and linguistics is theoretical (potential). Dynamics is related to statics as act and potential. (as Aristotle first mooted, although the made potential formally inferior to act. Modern physics says that potential (form) and act are formally identical. Language depends on formal (abstract) representations of things whose unique total representation is themselves. By truncating representations, we can create abstract versions of things, rather as we can delete the less significant digits of ... numbers (replacing them with zeros as placeholders) and still get a pretty good representation of that number. Better to consider it in terms of the resolution of detail. Only the reality itself resolves every detail. Any linguistic representation leaves much to the imagination.
[page 3]
Friday 17 September 2004
Following Plato, we envisage a world of myriad forms. Following Cantor, we hypothesize that each of these forms can be represented by an ordered set of distinguishable symbols. Following Heracleitus, we also propose that this universe of forms represented by a universe of ordinal numbers is dynamic so that (possibly subject to certain rules) one form can be transformed into another. A mathematical device for transforming ordinal numbers into one another is the Turing machine or computer. A Turing machine moves from a given input state into a computed output state (or not state, if none exists for the input provided) in a deterministic way. It can transform a countable subset of all numbers into one another, either in a long winded way via a look up table, or more succinctly as an algorithm shorter than the look up table. Broader than the Turing machine, which deals with a countable set of discrete states, is the quantum machine which appears to constrain the physical transformations in the universe, as, for instance, when an atom emits or absorbs a photon.
Sound religion is a public utility.
Saturday 18 September 2004
The old religions say that we are internally at war with ourselves, and tend to use the same warlike terminology and ... actions in their relationships with one another,
So an article for the SMH 'A New Religion is the Only Answer'. For which, on order to overcome some of the associations of the words natural and
[page 4]
religion, we can coin the terms 'nare' and 'nate' for the religion and theology (respectively) proposed here.
The key to control is countability. One cannot control the uncountable. We can give a mathematical explication of these statements n terms of requisite variety and bandwidth. We postulate that observable == countable, and all observations are counts. What is being counted, however, may have uncountable quantities in its determination. So we postulate continuous wavefunctions defining with uncountable precision the possibility structure of a given set of (possible) events.
From a quantum mechanical point of view, what physics gives us us a set of carefully specified events, each of which is assigned a given probability. The total probability of any given set, no matter how many elements it contains may be normalized to one. If the set is countable, we arrange that that all the probabilities of the individual events sum to 1. In not-countable situations, the sum is replaced by an integral
Books
| Chomsky, Noam, and Adriana Belletti, Luigi Rizzi (editors), Nature and Language, Cambridge University Press 2002 Amazon book description: 'In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind, and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. Following a lucid introduction is a penetrating interview with Chomsky, in which he provides the clearest and most elegant introduction to current theory available. It makes his Minimalist Program accessible to all. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government. A significant landmark in the development of linguistic theory, On Nature and Language will be welcomed by students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive science and politics, as well as anyone interested in the development of Chomsky's thought. ' Amazon back |
| Chomsky, Noam, and Nirmalangshu Mukherjee, B. N. Patnaik, R. K. Agnihotri, Rama Kant Agnihotri (editors), The Architecture of Language, Oxford University Press 2000 Jacket: 'Chomsky ... has consistently maintained that human beings are genetically endowed with an innate language faculty - a set of principles that constitute what he calls 'Universal Grammar'. Particular languages are generated by specific environmental conditions. This approach to the study of languages has been called a 'generative enterprise' and has revolutionised our understanding of human languages and other cognitive systems. This book consists of the edited transcipt of a lecture, delivered at the University of Delhi in January 1996, where Chomsky reflected on the history of the enterprise and related it to some strikingly novel advances in recent grammatical theory called the 'Minimalist Program'. Integrating philosophical and conceptual isses with empirical research, he sketched some of the key issues that have characterised generative grammar in recent years to chart out the agenda for future research in language theory.' Amazon back |
| Chomsky, Noam, and Mitsou Ronat, On Language: Chomsky's Classic Works Language and Responsibility and Reflections on Language in One Volume, New Press 1998 Amazon book description: 'Two of Chomsky's most famous and accessible works, back in print in one ... volume. ... On Language features some of the noted linguist and political critic's most informal and highly accessible work, making it an ideal introduction to his thought. In Part I ("Language and Responsibility") Chomsky presents a fascinating self-portrait of his political, moral, and linguistic thinking. In Part II ("Reflections on Language") Chomsky explores the more general implications of the study of language and offers incisive analyses of the controversies among psychologists, philosophers, and linguists over fundamental questions of language.' Amazon back |
Click on an "Amazon" link in the booklist at the foot of the page to buy the book, see more details or search for similar items
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