on being heard -
a preamble

After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination. (And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.) The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings.

From the preface by the author to: Philosophical Investigations,  by Ludwig Wittgenstein; Cambridge, January 1945, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.

Whatever power facts may have comes only from the stories that are told with them.≡ Take E=mc² for instance.▼ Scientific facts are deceptively simple, existing in a world of absolutes. Reality is more like a movie, each frame a moment of choice, the facts of it subjective and relative, hard to define or measure. These different types of fact, concerns of different languages, while appearing similar, fatally contaminate each other. ▼ The language of science, framed by microscopes and modeled with maths, is built from definitions and laws, whereas natural language emerges from behaviours, sight, touch, and sound. It's ambiguous, and it evolves. It's the story of the lives that are told through its meaning.▼

Changing centuries of scientific thought that had considered energy and mass to be completely distinct and unrelated, Einstein's famous formula E=mc² showed them to be different forms of the same thing.► In 1945 his equation appeared in Henry DeWolf Smyth's report to the US government on the efforts to make the atomic bomb, efforts which in the end resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, it is unlikely that Einstein's equation was much use in designing the bomb - beyond making scientists and military leaders realise that such a thing would be theoretically possible.►

▲

While words are commonly taken to be synonymous with language, para-verbal, extra-verbal and non-verbal components provide their context and definition. Taken together these components comprise cultures, coextensive with linguistic classifications of idiolects and sociolects.

Though language is often considered coextensive with nationality, the two are distinct. Their speech communities may or may not be unified politically or culturally. Each may embrace many dialects and though these might be closely related they may also diverge to the point of mutual unintelligibility. The linguist Max Weinreich famously observed that a language is merely a dialect with an army.

Miscommunication arises when language-cultures fail to recognise "false-friends". While the term is generally used to refer to those words in different languages that are pronounced the same while carrying different meanings, it also describes more general inter-cultural crossed-wires which routinely impact on scientific, as well as social conversation≡    visiting teachers to the USA calling pencil erasers rubbers, and political debate,≡    though president Kennedy may not in fact have called himself a donut the possibilities remain► from masking quite different conceptual definitions. Reactions to North Korean missile tests or to the speeches of Arab leaders show how easily Dr Strangelove scenarios can unfold.

Referring to misunderstandings arising from not recognising differing reference-frames, Gilbert Ryle coined the term category mistake, and illustrated it with this example:

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks: But where is the University? .. It has then to be explained to him .. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized.

The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle, 1949 Hutchinson 2009 republication, Routledge, p.6-7.

Recognition of category mistakes is not something new. Over two thousand years ago Aristotle wrote:

It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality.

(De Anima ii 1, 412b 6-9), as cited by Christopher Shields in: "Aristotle's Psychology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Category mistakes are not merely an academic issue either. In science for instance they are a practical one. Fifty years before Ryle the physicist Heinrich Hertz wrote:

Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.

Principles of Mechanics Heinrich Hertz (Prof. Physics, Bonn University), Macmillan & Co.Ltd London 1899, pp 7-8.

While the language of science appears to be built from definitions and laws, along the spectrum of its application, ranging from mathematics to physics to chemistry to biology and so on, this becomes increasingly less the case. In pharmacology and medicine, for instance, scientific language becomes framed by professional, commercial, and marketing needs, which obscure their uncertainty and statistical bias.

Natural language on the other hand evolves from the biosemiotic relationship between an organism and its environment. It is coextensive with life.► In a primordial process of signalling, an organism interprets its environment, of which it forms a part, as signs that carry those meanings which it finds relevant.

Signs exist only when they are identified. A pattern with meaning must be extracted from the infinite possibilities, in a subjective process unique to each organism. Over time, systems of signs - languages - emerge from the behaviours of these interpreting creatures as a function of their ability to perceive the reality that surrounds them. Through their own cycles of learning, others reinterpret these languages, adapting and modifying both their content and structure.

Communication, from the Latin: communis, meaning: common, public, general,► is a two-way process — broadcasting is not enough to make your message 'common'.

From birth, life engages with a world that is an environment of signs. In this, each individual creates more signs - those it perceives, those that it represents, and those that are internal to itself. Evolutionary advantage exists both in interpreting these signs, and, by corollary, in influencing the interpretations of others. This then is communication, and language the subset of signs through which it takes place - an imprint left by the continuing evolution of the culture of those who use it.

Yet lying seems now to have been been made into a libel, when surely it is no so complicated. Meaning simply: to deceive (by something), I imagine our current definition is perhaps: to deceive (with an untruth and with intent). This removes any social obligation for us actually to be truthful. We can be "economical with la verite" or "look after the best interests of others" (with white lies), or simply claim to be "being polite".≡   Being polite is the service of harmony through hypocrisy. Being untruthful is not necessary to achieve harmony, but tuthfullness is often not our most immediately profitable course..

Lucrative swathes of society have been built upon lying. Modern marketing and commerce for instance seek to persuade us to make a purchase we might not make if we were simply presented with the facts.≡   The argument there is no lie here is based on an absurdity: that, as there is an infinite of facts which might be relevant any selection can be truthful. Conflicts of interest are discounted. The relationship of the law with the truth seems incidental. Algorithms of due-process are viewed as superior to any need for truth and to have eliminated biased judgement. And is seems accepted that politicians, lobbyists and spin doctors, when not actually lying, employ both truth and half-truths to convince people of their judgements. Yet nonetheless we continue to put our shoulders to their wheel.

It seems irrational to say these things are other than lies, but does not matter what word we use. Greater perhaps than the macro problems lying has given rise to,≡   the acceleratating destruction of the environment, the rise of crime and social inequality, and the corruption of the world's largest democracy (to name the three that come to mind) our pragmatic relationship with lying systemically contaminates our society. From our working lives, to friendships, love and family, the deception of others cannot be accomplished without also deceiving ourselves.

▲

Finnish has almost perfecty phonemic orthography, meaning that it's pronounced as it is written, with each letter always being spoken and always pronounced in precisely the same way. You'd think this would make the language easier to learn but in my experience it has little effect. Perhaps because I had no speech role-model, my struggle has been not to pronounce dipthongs - as they don't actually exist in Finnish - and always to pronounce double letters as two sounds.≡    This all seems tricky and odd at first, but thick coats are seldom confused with thick oats and the local co-op is never confused with a coop and definitely not with a cop.

▲

Our senses react only to a small subset of the total amount of the potential information present in our environment. A dog's keen sense of smell for instance gives it an awareness of the world markedly different from our own. Insects see ultraviolet light, bats see with sound, and birds use gravitational fields to guide their migrations.

Even before birth we have begin to build up this perception of the world around us, responding first to the chemical signalling of our mother's body, and then even to sounds. Steadily we reduce data chaos into that which we can recognise as reality, so as to be fit to meet the needs we will have.►

Our central nervous system continously receives information from our senses, learns what it signifies for us, and compiles its live executive summary. In crowded rooms we hear the words of our companions and filter out those of the rest. On the street we suddenly see the approaching car, invisible an instant before. The images that fall on our retinas are of a world upside down which we must learn to right, just as we must learn to recognise it is us who move and the world which remains still - even in those crowded rooms.

Though the world around us is not created by our minds what we see of it is what it means to us, as individuals of a particular species. We cannot directly experience it, just as we cannot feel the floor of a cave under our walking stick. Rather we interpret the changing pressures of its head on our hand.►

We learn, beginning with our family, to prefer one experience over another, through its relation to the context which, for us, gives that experience its meaning. This is not mimicry, but development of self-expression within a cultural reference-frame - a systemic process, that continues unseen thoughout our lives, to build our unique, individual set of nested cultures, our only awareness of which, comes through an experience of culture-shock, when we realize our communication, and self-expression is uncontrollably being distorted.

A culture is a language, so equating language with words leads to confusion. The finnish language, for instance, is considered by Finns to be "difficult" — clearly this is not inherently so, as it is no more difficult for a Finn to learn Finnish than it is for a Russian to learn Russian, or for an Englishman to learn English. Though more difficult for a speaker of English to learn than languages that are more closely related to it, such as Spanish or French, the basic structure of Finnish seems no more complex than that of German. Technically, learning Finnish is elementary compared to the challenge of learning Chinese, Xhosa, or Arabic.

It can only then be meant that Finnish is difficult for foreigners to learn; and this then can only be the case for cultural reasons, on account of the degree to which Finns are motivated to include foreigners in their society and to become familiar with them.

Learning words is easy - and grammar only slightly less so. Constructing meaning however is a socio-cultural process (the reason mechanical translations have been so poor before the crowd-learning used by Google translate); and that is as difficult for incomers as it is made to be by those who comprise its reference-frame.

Mathematics is able to deal successfully only with the simplest of situations, more precisely, with a complex situation only to the extent that rare good fortune makes this complex situation hinge upon a few dominant simple factors. Beyond the well-traversed path, mathematics loses its bearings in a jungle of unnamed special functions and impenetrable combinatorial particularities. Thus, the mathematical technique can only reach far if it starts from a point close to the simple essentials of a problem which has simple essentials. That form of wisdom which is the opposite of single-mindedness, the ability to keep many threads in hand, to draw for an argument from many disparate sources, is quite foreign to mathematics.

Jacob Schwartz, "The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics on Science"

Jacob Schwartz 1930-2009, mathematician, computer scientist, prof. of computer science at New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, designer of the SETL programming language and the NYU Ultracomputer, founder of the New York University Department of Computer Science and chair from 1964 to 1980.

It may seem natural to think that, to understand a complex system, one must construct a model incorporating everything that one knows about the system. However sensible this procedure may seem, in biology it has repeatedly turned out to be a sterile exercise. There are two snags with it. The first is that one finishes up with a model so complicated that one cannot understand it: the point of a model is to simplify, not to confuse. The second is that if one constructs a sufficiently complex model one can make it do anything one likes by fiddling with the parameters: a model that can predict anything predicts nothing.

"The Origins of Life", by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary.

John Maynard Smith 1920-2004 theoretical evolutionary biologist, and geneticist, Britain. Instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution.
Eors Szathmary, Prof. of theoretical evolutionary biology, Hungary.

Beside the ethnic cleansing, genocide, enslavement and slaughter of conquered peoples in World War 2, the preceding slaughter of World War 1, The Great War, was such that Europe's military leaders were forced to enlist teenage reservists to feed the war machine. This Great War was responsible for almost completely erasing an entire generation of men from European development. Less than a generation later, World War 2 wreaked similar havoc.

When in 1945 it was finally over, Germany's elite scientists, serviced by legions of disposable slaves -- who had perfected the killing machines of Aushwitz and Dachau, created chemical, biological, ballistic weapons, and worked on atomic weapons and stealth aircraft for Hitler's arsenal -- were pardoned, and welcomed into the heart of the American scientific community.^{1 ► 2 ►}

From the election of governments to dealing with climate change, facts quickly become swamped by the passions they stir. Facts, by definition, are dispassionate - so they can't be held responsible. It's the story facts have told us that is to blame. After investing a lifetime, of work, and faith and hope in a story, it's easier to cling to it than to bear its loss. And denial of the truth simply becomes stronger the more futile we feel our struggle with it is. Perhaps we hope that even if we cannot kill truth still we might at least regain some peace of mind by silencing its messenger.

"The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere.
This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start."

from: "Wyrd Sisters" by Terry Pratchett, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1988, p196.►

The armies of Timur (Tamerlane), known as the Wrath-of-god and Sword-of-Islam, crossed Eurasia from Delhi to Moscow, from the Tien Shan Mountains to Anatolia and Africa, brutally and mercilessly subjugating the peoples of Iran, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, across an area of nearly 2 million square miles.☐

While unifying central asia, he laid waste to sizable parts of the rest of his empire, sacking, destroying and massacring the populations of Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities where he was responsible for some of the worst atrocities in recorded history.

Timur (Tamerlane, 1336 - 1405), the last great nomadic emperor, born in the city that is modern-day Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan, was killed by an infection as he prepared to invade China.

For more than one reason what I publish here will have points of contact with what other people are writing to-day. - If my remarks do not bear a stamp which marks them as mine, - I do not wish to lay any further claim to them as my property. I make them public with doubtful feelings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another - but, of course, it is not likely. I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. I should have liked to produce a good book. This has not come about, but the time is past in which I could improve it.

From the author's preface to: Philosophical Investigations,  by Ludwig Wittgenstein; Cambridge, January 1945, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.