First post out-the purpose of this blog is to make it easier to update my stuffs. I'll probably still use my webdrive space for files and suchnot, but I like the ease of updating and sharing this space. The title was almost "random acts of wordiness," but devolved. I hope to make this more a space for thoughts than events, where my last webspace leaned more toward updates, shaped, no doubt, by its name.
Which brings me to my first thought. Naming is a powerful tool. Language, at its core, is a set of names for things (not just objects--events, states of mind--propositions) that is recognized by all its speakers/participants. With mathematical language, powerful findings are generated by the simple process of naming. What's the first step in geometry? Name the players--point, line, plane, space and name their interactions with terms like "determine," "there exist," and "between." Naming also has powerful psychological effects. Statements about people, from name-calling to praise, can provoke responses in cases from self-esteem problems to dog-training. But, as you've maybe already complained, "But postulates aren't names," or "Complements aren't names, doof," I'll just say "language" instead of "naming" from now on for clarity. *
The power of language is clear in the Creation story in the Bible--God speaks, and it is so. From an atheist's perspective, though, it's a bit tricky. Consider a time where humans have no language, where "language" is a symbology--a set of symbols (phonetic, manual, or written) that have meaning outside of themselves (in the same way the smell of bacon has meaning outside of itself--it suggests the presence of cooking bacon). If there were some brilliant caveman, as yet unnamed, who saw the beauty and utility of language, he would have to name something. But to name it would require some sort of signifying of what is being named. What if his audience ended up thinking a point downward meant "rock" and the sounds in "petros" meant "this thing I'm next to"? Too bad for Oogums. He doesn't have any symbols that have any meaning. He's stuck with unintelligibility for the rest of his life.
It follows from either the caveman story or the Creation story (made in God's image) that humans are hard-wired for language. I have heard that memory may be triggered by or use language, explaining why people typically can't remember things from before they learn to talk. But what are the bounds of language's influence? It certainly pervades our business, humor, and relationships, but does it influence them, too? I don't know.
*But I still think they're kind of the same thing, unless you refer to the special kind of naming as I was required to name the location for this blog, where I needed something that wasn't taken--it's a one-to-one relationship between signifiers and signified. That's just a special kind of naming.
