Language is so much richer then the Significant. What can be said, found, or made in language goes well beyond what can be brought under the auspicious of the significant.
Significant (point out) language is just that which is done on receipts. We can mark (boundary) things (gatherings) as belonging to certain (sieved) classes (called) . And count (cutoff together) the thinks (gatherings) in each class (called). "There are five apples owed this man" count (cutoff together) to five from the class (called) of apples, being certain (sieved) to avoid the not apples, which are not to be counted (cutoff together) with the apples, if the man comes to take them.
It is about knowing what belongs in which categories, and only works in so far as we have a way of determining what belongs and what doesn't. You can only count apples if you can tell what is and apple and what is not an apple.
I postulate, that because of written languages history with receipts it tends to be connected with the veery specific part of language that is the Significant. I don't name this aspect 'Significant' with any kindness, but mockingly. It is the language if the discerning mind, the mind that splits things in to categories, that sifts.
Sifting is at very most half of language. And certainly not the greater half. But it is the obsession of our sciences and even some aspects of philosophy. It isn't bad, but mindlessly over used.
Look at text, how it is sifted into well ordered sets of symbols. Each clerly identifiable as one word, and not another. In order to say anything interesting poets have to use tricky language to maintain ambiguity and scope to words, rather then just having a orderly set of symbols. We shouldn't order
Machines can be good. But to order everything like a machine is to become ordered like a machine, and to make machines of all that we order. I beg you not to order those around you. Neither man nor beast nor plant nor mote of dirt. Not river not forest not even fire ordered. When that which isn't machine, material, in them shows its nature... your orders will become cries, cries unanswered. With dams we order rivers, and with silt and calamity and unpredictability does the river torment us for our hubris.
Do I tell you to never order? No. You may even order me, if I am our of order. But not all things have a proper place. Be humble in ordering the world around you, be humble in ordering nature. Be humble in ordering man. Remember that the power of an order does not come from the top, but from the bottom. Remember that when we order, we are either ourselves just maintaining an order, or beginning an order without an order.
Am I ordering the Significant?
Ray, this thought-provoking. It is true that language evolved from receipts. I remember studying this in-depth in my Prehistory class at CSU. Writing really began as sets of pebbles (or some equivalent small object) contained in bags, so I recall, that evolved bit by bit into marks on tablets as shorthand to represent those bags of pebbles.
ReplyDeleteThis means that Western language began as shorthand for quantities of money. Descriptions. Isolation of items, quite frankly a solipsistic activity. But one with a purpose: creating sets. the set of money owed by Mr. Jones, and the set of assets owned by Mr. Jones etc.
Science follows suit: descriptions, quantifications, solipsistic activity, creation of sets.
What is profound about our current state is not that we place too much faith in science/receipt style language.
What is profound about our current state is that the powers that be understand perfectly well what scientific thinking is but also how rarely it is used. Talk radio, for example, doesn't have anything to do with presenting scientific inquiries. And this is fully intentional. Cuz they release that scientific inquiries don't matter.
The result is this: you get the Noam Chomskys of the world who know global warming and peak oil are a catratrophe because of SCIENTIFIC inquiries. Then you got the Sean Hannities of the world who say, well, I really don't wanna treat it like he's "saying things about things." He gives poetry about "Capitalism," "liberty, "freedom" and "patriotism."