Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2001 15:49:53 +0800
Subject: PKF: Pluralism and Language


My main area of interest is language. I think that language lacks a proper
science more than medicine does. The reason, I think, is that scientists are
still looking for unified theories (a traditional grammatical theory is
comparible to the sort of unification we find in non-quantum physics). The
internal reason for unification theorists amounts to the belief that the set
of everything is a consistent set. Why think that? Language is a product of
many independent evolutionary tracks. It seems like a waste of time to look
for a unifying principle for independent evotionary tracks. If the couple
times in our life our babble is effective, saving our life once, and helping
us reproduce once, and if the genetic development requires babbling ones
entire life in order to be effective a couple times, then most of language
isn't effective. Historically, I find similar views of language in
Wittgenstein and John Austin.
    Does anyone know if Feyerabend tried to say anything about language? I
would be interested to see other people apply pluralism to language.

Quinn
**********************************************************************
Contributions: mailto:feyerabend-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: mailto:majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: mailto:feyerabend-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu