202 In the Labyrinths of Language

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1 Chapter 9 Epilogue 1 want to remind the reader that this book is only an extended essay. It is not to he regarded as a definitive monograph. Languages which are well known to me have been considered at great length; other languages outside my competence have been dealt with only superficially. From the standpoint of my probabilistic model, the language of architecture, the language of rhythm in poetry, the language of musical composition, and the language of icon-painting style could also have been considered, but this has not been attempted. Some readers may be surprised that among the numerous quotations in this book they have found no references to Keynes, Reichenbach, and Rescher. Since the time of Hume, who showed the impossibility of the logical grounding of induction, great efforts have been spent in the rehabilitation of inductive logic. Particularly interesting results have been obtained during recent decades: there have appeared probabilistic and indeterminate logics, and it has become necessary to construct rules for the transformation of the non-deductive logic of inductive judgments into pure deduction. A detailed description of all these questions can be found in the recently published collective monograph Logika i Empiricheskoye Poznanie (Tavanets, 1972). This is, if you like, another approach to the problem discussed in my earlier book-an approach being developed from the standpoint of those whose prior notions are given by logical concepts. My task has been different, namely, that of approaching the study of human intellectual activity through the analysis of language as an actual system. It is only natural that different approaches lead to an essentially different statement of problems, though for solving them we often use the same probabilistic concepts. Most likely, in the 20 1

2 202 In the Labyrinths of Language future it will be possible to speak about where the two or more approaches intersect. Another approach to the analysis of the language of science which differs from mine and seems to be dictated by a deep belief in traditional logic can be found in the book by Popovich (1966). I believe that the considerations stated in this book havr a certain pragmatic importance. Everyone engaged in teaching at institutions of higher education clearly comprehends the necessity of philosophical or, perhaps a little narrowly, of logico-linguistic interpretations of the process of scientific development. Science can be regarded as the development of a certain language adapted so as to receive and mirror our knowledge of the world. Today, more rapidly than ever, the transformation of the language of science proceeds. This process is going on more quickly than it can he understood. This causes a certain bewilderment. It is not clear what language should be taught to students: the old one in which knowledge has been acquired or the new dialects which have come from abstract mathematical constructions. Of what service can these new dialects be? These new dialects are backed by computers, allowing one to reduce the routine part of conversation a million-fold and producing for discussion only the final results. Despite all the allurements of new language means, they are inculcated much more slowly than would be expected, and they face resistance which cannot always be explained merely by the natural conformism of scientists who fear the loss of what has been acquired so far. Are not too many dialects rushing upon the heads of those who have been accustomed to speaking ordinary language in science-though a little bit changed? Do not new dialects introduce an unnecessary hardness unnatural for the system of constructing judgments in this or that field of knowledge? More often than not, we hear complaints that, say, in medicine, mechanical methods of diagnostics suppress the initiative of the physician. We can hardly do anything but agree with this. Everything would be different if the algorithms of diagnostics were soft and produced not one but a set of answers with corresponding commentaries, giving a physician a possibility to meditate. It is not quite clear what we want to achieve by the mathematization of knowledge. Do we want to change radically the established system of thinking in this or that field of knowledge? Or is the task perhaps more modest - to find a language which would permit us to describe phenomena in the established system of thinking but in a more compact and mobile way? Recently, many hopes have been pinned to machine methods of informational service in the sciences, but only a small part of these have been realized. The process of searching for new scientific information is one of the main constituents of creative research, and an attempt to translate this procedure into hard languages of descriptive systems based upon the

3 Epilogue 203 Boolean algebra seems altogether na~ve. The whole discussion about "pertinence" and "relevance" of such systems seems totally unrealistic, though systems so constructed prove very efficient for the solution of some partial problems. It also appears possible to use computers on a wider scale relying upon natural languages of science and using natural searching attributes of publications (Nalimov and Mul'chenko, 1969). At present, information science, or documentation science as it is usually called in the Western countries, is not a scientific discipline but just a set of some (not always apt) cookbook rules and technical solutions. In my opinion, its truly scientific, theoretical basis can be developed only on the grounds of the analysis of scientific language. Moreover, the philosophy of science itself, if it implies something consistent and genuinely important for scientists, can be constructed upon the background of logicolinguistic analysis of science. Here lies, above all, the pragmatic essence of language theory understood in a broad sense. A question can be asked as to whether the formal approach to language analysis suggested in this hook is correct and how far we can go in this direction. Imagine that an observer from another World has come to our Earth. Having become acquainted with our culture and its history he, as a metaobserver, might send an account of his observations that would sound roughly as follows: Earth is inhibited by humans, odd creatures who claim to be thinking beings. They have invented enormously complicated and intricate things -Words-and finally themselves fell under the dominion of their cruel invention. Their history shows that the Word did not acquire its universal significance at the very beginning. There is a dim legend of Lemurians, forefathers of men, who lived in ancient Lemuria, a sunken continent. They had no Words as a sign system. Their speech was like the sounds of Nature: wailing of the wind, murmur of a stream, sound of a waterfall, roar of a volcano. In ancient times among these people, there were sages who did not worship the power of the Word and were not afraid of it. There were teachings which they called mystic in which the teachers did not convey in Words their profound experiences of inner contemplation. They only spoke of the way other people could acquire this experience. It was stated that even great Texts could not give novel knowledge; they only destroyed ignorance and thus gave way to inner knowledge. But all this remained in the past, and all is forgotten. It was only a collateral line of their culture. Then new times came and everything began to develop around the Word. It was said, "In the beginning was the Word..."And the Word became the most significant thing in life, and life was embodied in the Word. One of their modern philosophers [Karl Jaspers ( ),

4 204 In the Labyrinths of Language one of the founders of German existentialism] proclaimed communication to be the essence of a human being. He declared that the "nous is identical to an unrestricted will to communication." If something could be named, incarnated in the Word, it was considered to be cognition. Another philosopher and writer [Jean Paul Sartre ( ), one of the founders of French existentialism] described the notion of Word absorbed by him in childhood in the following way... and each thing was humbly begging for a name, and giving it one was like both creating it and taking it since I had discovered the world through language, for a long time 1 mistook language for the World. To exist was to have a registered trade-name somewhere on the infinite Tables of the World, writing meant engraving new beings on them or-this was my most persistent illusion-catching living things in the trap of phrases: if 1 put words together ingeniously, the object would become entangled in the signs, and 1 would hold it.... I tried to unveil the stillness of existence through a counteracting murmur of words, and, above all, I confused things with their names: that is belief. This is a hymn to the Word and its power, a description of how it subdues man from his childhood and how the Word's master, a writer, is born. There appeared words as symbols carrying information only of themselves. People succeeded in constructing rules for combining these Words-symbols which are extremely fanciful and difficult to comprehend and at the same time inwardly beautiful and fascinating by the perfection of their rigor. This has begun to be considered as the height of knowledge. Maintaining the pureness of this language became the principal concern of many people, the object of worship of new priests. However, somebody has shown that this language is not inherently omnipotent and is probably quite helpless. But, even by means of this language whose Words do not mean anything, it has become possible to lear~ much about the World and even to subdue it. Their new temples are places where Logic-the daughter of the Word-is worshipped. Still, some of their philosophers have realized that Language is only a Game. And someone else has understood that they perceive the World the way their Words allow them to. For some reason or other, Words with rhythm have acquired a peculiar power. They may intoxicate the listener. Those who are masters of such Words possess in the human World an unlimited attractiveness for others. Words have acquired power over people. By means of Words great changes in their society have been made. Words led people to make wars. And what is amazing here: no two people understand Words in the same way.

5 Epilogue 205 Systems of Words have been invented in which the same Words mean quite different things for different people. Some people believe that the less clear a Word's meaning is the more that can be expressed with it. And nobody can understand why some Words which possessed a universal power in the quite recent past are now forgotten. With the help of Words, people have invented new absurdly powerful ways of disseminating words. Senseless Words came pouring in; they have become so numerous that nobody can comprehend them. And. what is altogether astounding, this is just the way Words exercise their influence upon people. And finally, somewhere in the West, there appeared angry young men who revolted against the Word for the first time during the long progress of their culture's development. They proclaimed that the culture of the Word had fallen in pieces-that the Word brought the Big Lie to the World-and they demanded that it be destroyed. What do they want? Do they want to destroy themselves? They are children of the Word and they are fighting against it by means of the Word, too. And others, those who like and highly appreciate their culture, keep longing for the Universal Word by means of which it would be possible to express and understand everything. 1 cannot comprehend anything in this strange World. There is no place for a metaobserver here. It's time for me to go back... This is a myth of language.