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Progressive Thinkers as of 5/8/2020
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The different vantage points of the SCM are illustrated by the usage of different modes of expression be it in how one speaks, where and when one speaks or writes and the language(s) employed as characterizations of one's impressions. In this sense, language, speaking, and writing can be viewed as different art forms, just as are the different fields of mathematics... though one might easily include any subject. Then again, we often invert this description and say that the many art forms seen in serious subjects can look upon art with a serious perspective and not the usual theatrical poetics so commonly noted at art expositions. The SCM uses three languages that should be viewed as generalized headings because they involve multiple subjects, such as the few examples provided, and no doubt each reader might well (metaphorically and analogically) mix and match characteristics according to their own inclinations:
- Vertebrate Anatomy: 3-divisioned Pentadactyl limb (Involves numerous considerations from various subjects such as biology, chemistry, architecture/construction (scaffolding, corner stone, foundation, framing, mortar, etc...), anthropology, archeology, medicine, dentistry, etc.)
Since Darwin's time, the study of comparative anatomy has centered largely on body structures that are homologous—i.e., ones in different species that have the same evolutionary origin regardless of their present-day function. Such structures may look quite different and perform different tasks, but they can still be traced back to a common structure in an animal that was ancestral to both. For example, the fore limbs of humans, birds, crocodiles, bats, dolphins, and rodents have been modified by evolution to perform different functions, but they are all evolutionarily traceable to the fins of crossopterygian fishes, in which that basic arrangement of bones was first established. Analogous structures, by contrast, may resemble each other because they perform the same function, but they have different evolutionary origins and often a different structure, the wings of insects and of birds being a prime example of this.
Modern comparative anatomy dates from the work of Pierre Belon, who in 1555 showed that the skeletons of humans and birds are constructed of similar elements arranged in the same way.
"comparative anatomy." Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, 2013. ( Britannica.com: Comparative Anatomy)
- Sociology: 3-divisioned social classes with skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers (involving psychology, political science, cultural anthropology, economics, social insects, etc.) Whereas one may speculate when humanity on an individual basis began to think in sociological terms, in a collectively acknowledged sense, the idea of sociology appears to have begun (that is, amongst western thinkers), with the philosophy of the Ancient Greeks, but the more present day variety began in the 18th and 19th European cultures of thinkers; largely amongst the Germans, French and English. According to the Britannica article on Sociology, the French philosopher Auguste Comte (Jan. 19, 1798 - Sep. 5, 1857) is recognized for having coined the term sociology, and the wiki article on him says he is the founder of the modern discipline. Other sources say that Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406) is the actual father of Sociology.
Despite controversies over the theory of class, there is general agreement among social scientists on the characteristics of the principal social classes in modern societies. Sociologists generally posit three classes: upper, working (or lower), and middle.
The upper class in modern capitalist societies is often distinguished by the possession of largely inherited wealth. The ownership of large amounts of property and the income derived from it confer many advantages upon the members of the upper class. They are able to develop a distinctive style of life based on extensive cultural pursuits and leisure activities, to exert a considerable influence on economic policy and political decisions, and to procure for their children a superior education and economic opportunities that help to perpetuate family wealth.
Historically, the principal contrast with the upper class in industrial societies was provided by the working class, which traditionally consisted of manual workers in the extractive and manufacturing industries. Given the vast expansion of the service sector in the world's most advanced economies, it has been necessary to broaden this definition to include in the working class those persons who hold low-paying, low-skilled, non-unionized jobs in such service industries as food service and retail sales. There are considerable differences within the working class, however, and a useful distinction exists between skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers that broadly corresponds with differences in income level. What characterizes the working class as a whole is a lack of property and dependence on wages. Associated with this condition are relatively low living standards, restricted access to higher education, and exclusion, to a large extent, from the spheres of important decision making. Aside from the dramatic rise in living standards that occurred in the decades after World War II, the main factor affecting the working class in the second half of the 20th century was a general shift in the economy from manufacturing to service industries, which reduced the number of manual workers. In the United States and Britain, among other countries, the decline in traditional manufacturing industries left a core of chronically unemployed persons isolated from the economic mainstream in decaying urban areas. This new urban substratum of permanently jobless and underemployed workers has been termed the underclass by some sociologists.
The middle class may be said to include the middle and upper levels of clerical workers, those engaged in technical and professional occupations, supervisors and managers, and such self-employed workers as small-scale shopkeepers, businessmen, and farmers. At the top—wealthy professionals or managers in large corporations—the middle class merges into the upper class, while at the bottom—routine and poorly paid jobs in sales, distribution, and transport—it merges into the working class.
"social class." Encyclopædia Britannica. (Britannica.com: Social Class)
Javanese and several languages in close contact with it—including at least Sundanese and Balinese—have developed a linguistic reflection of social stratification. Javanese uses three speech levels, distinguished by choice of vocabulary. The primary distinction is between Kromo, a high form used when speaking to social superiors, and Ngoko, a low or neutral form used when speaking to social equals or inferiors. Further subdivisions are recognized within Kromo, and in addition a small number of words called Madya (Middle) contain elements of both Kromo and Ngoko styles. In Samoa a special vocabulary is used when addressing persons of chiefly rank.
"Austronesian languages." Encyclopædia Britannica. (Britannica.com Austronesian Languages)
- Mathematics: 3-divisioned enumeration (involving early counting, basic arithmetic, trigonometry, geometry [x,y,z axis] cultural anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, physics, chemistry, etc.) Today there are several "cultures" of mathematics with their own vernaculars such as calculus, algebra; combinatorics; game theory; geometry; number theory; probability theory; set theory; statistics; trigonometry, etc... Mathematics, with its origins in early commerce and counting, arose thousands of years ago.
The Origins of Mathematics
While some observers may offhandedly dismiss the The Standard Cognitive model illustration, others embrace a capacity to make inter-connections and advance their own translations as to what is being represented. For some readers, the SCM implies that humans are somehow forced by their anatomical design to construct a synonymous type of socialization with a comparably styled economic practice. However, let me throw a wrench into such a perspective by offering another view of the SCM:
Like the Rosetta stone being viewed by some observers who do not begin to contemplate what is being offered to them, the mindset of some readers is not influenced to generate inter-active considerations. They can see the different ideas but their brain does not connect-the-dots with respect to the information being provided. And even if it were spelled out, some would still be unable to appreciate the dimensions of expression being exhibited because they do not have the sensibility for doing so. While some degree or level understanding may be embraced for one or all three languages, and in fact a person may have an in depth knowledge of one or more of them; they do not have the practiced inclination of coalescing the illustrations information as a language of metaphor. While I can provide some examples from the English language, it may not be certain that such references originated in an English speaking environment.
For the first metaphor, since there are some readers who may have thought to themselves that they had several premonitions about the Coronavirus:
- Advertising images for Corona beer stuck in one's mind.
- The word virus or viral was repeatedly encountered.
- The number 19 was a number pattern which stuck in one's mind... first becoming prominent reappeared during the 911 twin towers events, such as the number of assailants involved in the plane crashes. (19 Hijackers in the September 11 attacks; COVID-19: Why Names Of New Infectious Diseases Matter by Joshua Cohen, Feb 13, 2020,07:23am EST)
If one reviews the comments of visionaries, they appear to consistently "receive" impressions which fit together like a puzzle, and therefore can be considered a metaphor, though we are inclined to say words such as impression. hint, vague picture, dream-like scene, etc... There are no doubt readers who have the "gift" of premonition but it is an unpracticed art of personalized divination. Whereas some routinely advance an appreciation of their intuition in the case of some extreme event like death, murder, violence, money, etc., they are dismissive of other forms of premonition. In any respect, we can add the foregoing three elements as a metaphor, just as the Standard Cognitive Model is with its three elements which are known by many people on an individual basis, and may have even been placed together, but not consciously assembled as I have done. The three-patterned "Corona, Virus, 19" ensemble involves enumeration, biology, and Geography in a given sociological context, just as the "Standard Cognitive Model".
With respect to metaphor it is of some interest to note that an attempted survey of metaphor collections concerning the English language provides us with the knowledge that we humans do not use numbers very often in descriptive metaphors. Hence, if nature uses number as a metaphor and we are viewing numbers in ways other than as a metaphor, the presumed "message" or available knowledge is not revealed to us. Far too often we are using numbers representing a given function that we become fixed on (called Functional fixedness). We do not permit ourselves to incorporate a mental flexibility for some things, for whatever reason such as an underlying insecurity of consciousness, because the human brain retains much of its earlier evolutionary stages of cognitive development. In other words, we humans remain very much the primitive who relies upon superstition and suppositions of magic to provide a "what if" approximation of some perceptions.
In attempting to provide some examples of metaphor involving the obvious usage of number (in that an actual number is displayed or a word like "three" representing a quantity is used); we may encounter phrases that you may or may not want to include as metaphors, and prefer to note them as references to superstition or some attempted practicality in a given time and place. Nonetheless, the use of numbers as metaphors, just as they are for lucky numbers and as indicators for fundamental processes in nature, is very limited. In several cases an expression may initially refer to a practicality or some supposed common sense for a given instance, but is then used as a metaphor when applied to a different context as if in doing so the user has somehow displayed wisdom or wit. Also, while one person may refer to a connection as a metaphor, another may claim it as a simile or in more general terms as a figure of speech, turn of thought, fanciful meandering, etc...
While definitions can provide a basis for developing a commonality of thought, it can also create detours and roadblocks for enlarging the means by which words can be used or are interpreted; as well as the case for using language as a means to conceal reality from those who would otherwise notice a more sobering reality... thereby paying witness to use of language as a survival mechanism involving rationalization. A good example is the wide scope of rationalization used by religious ideology. A religion survives though a government may not because it allows for flexibility and many political adherents grasp onto the reins of a make-believe horse of economics instead of pursuing the collection of brass rings like many religions do. Governments falter because they rely on traditions of given metaphors that the public moves away from and can no longer be used as a control measure by the inflexibility of those who gravitate to a government culture in which the metaphor of language becomes stale; unable to be used as a means of providing the necessary illusions by which the people are controlled because they no longer agree with ideas that are seen as ingenuous. As a result, in a last ditch effort to bring the people under control, the government either uses various methods of enforcement (war, disease, induced impoverishment, stricter laws, etc...), or is forced to alter its controlling metaphors that say one thing but represent another... yet the people believe they have acquired a new way of life (merely because of a change in metaphor).
If someone advances the comment that all of language is a metaphor; particularly the language of religion, then truth is merely what is believed in and adhered to. Then again, one might well view all different forms of life as metaphors of DNA which might then be viewed as a metaphor of particle physics which might them be supposed to be a metaphor of something else described in the most basic of terms such as what, or who, or when, or where? It stands to reason then that when a person claims 'one picture is worth a thousand words', the opposite notion that 'one word is worth a thousand pictures' is no less true; though this idea is infrequently illustrated in words to the point of becoming a commonly recognized theme of consideration. While it has achieved some recognition, it does not garner the widespread acknowledgment of the phrase "one picture is worth a thousand words". However, one might venture any subject matter's content such as mathematics, whereby they say that one equation is worth a thousand pictures, words, actions, etc...
- Ground Zero
- Patient Zero
- E pluribus unum (Out of Many, one)
- "One bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush" (or variations of this phrase)
- Two's company, threes a crowd.
- You have two cows
- Three sheets to the wind
- Three on a match
- (3, or 4, or 5, or 6...) Blind men and the elephant
- Fourth down and no time-outs left.
- Four Asian Tigers
- Five wisdoms
- They have nine lives
- Dressed to the nines
- Eleventh hour
- Baker's dozen (13)
- Catch-22 (logic)
- 800 lb. gorilla
The following are some references to Metaphor and Metaphor involving numbers. In my rater truncated efforts to find someone researching the distinction that there are only a few direct number-related metaphors, though there are quantitative expressions in various examples such as when using the words "some-one", "any-one"; "some- where" (some = one); "anywhere" (any = plurality), etc... It is of need to also point out that though we may see an expression such as "anywhere, everyplace, all the time, everyone does it, of-by-for the people," etc..., the plurality being stated may not be an expression of infinity, but an underlying quantity such as when someone describes a low quantity as much or many. One might also say "everyone", but they only mean a set number that they have not calculated, but based on their experience. The words "everyone, everyplace, all the time", etc., are being used as metaphors describing a small segment that is enlarged to provide some degree of plausibility and believability... by way of exaggeration. It is a practice of metaphor we are not accustomed to think about how very often "everyone" apparently uses metaphor in everyday speech... if not in fact all speech is metaphor and a given language, vernacular, jargon, etc., are all practiced metaphors of a given variety.
- Literary devices: Metaphor
- Metaphor (In referencing metaphor as a means by which we discuss two things at once, we come to note the presence of using duality in mental activity as opposed to singularity, trilarity, quadrilarity, etc...)
- List of English-language metaphors
- How Numbers help us spot Metaphors and Irony Posted by Clifton B. Parker-Standord, August 8TH, 2014
- Making sense of the spatial metaphor for number in natural language Rick Nouwen, Utrecht University
- Number Metaphors Armando Paulino Preciado Babb, Updated 25 January 2019
- Metaphor: Representing Numbers - Teaching Math (This reference brings up the comment that using numbers as metaphors is beyond the sophistication of fifth graders that we might apply to the whole of humanity because of the sparse use of number-related metaphors.)
Embodied Arithmetic: The Grounding Metaphors
But subitizing and counting are the bare beginnings of arithmetic. To go beyond them, to characterize arithmetic operations and their properties, you need much richer cognitive capacities:
- Metaphorizing capacity: You need to be able to conceptualize cardinal numbers and arithmetic operations in terms of your experiences of various kinds—experiences with groups of objects, with the part-whole structure of objects, with distances, with movement and locations, and so on.
- Conceptual-blending capacity: You need to be able to form correspondences across conceptual domains (e.g., combining subitizing with counting) and put together different conceptual metaphors to form complex metaphors.
Richard Honeck described three forms of scientific metaphors (Honeck, Richard P. (1980) Cognition and figurative language pp.405-417):
- Mixed scientific metaphor.
- The scientific metaphor theme.
- The scientific metaphor that redefines a concept from a theory.
One must ask why there are so few number-related metaphors in (at least) the English language. Then again, if we want to decipher the content of a metaphor, we can indeed see the presence of a quantity being referred to, but that words are being used in place of enumeration. Indeed, all the supposed great writers throughout history have not even made mention of this rather curious absence of enumerated symbolism. While there are many references with and without metaphor which describe some supposed occurrence to take place in the future to which in giving some mention thereof (or at least interpreted by someone thinking a particular comment is an instructive representation) the person is provided with a credit of having some unique insight or vision, yet none of them are actually able to provide a description thereof; whereby another, albeit different example of human cognitive limitation expresses itself. For an individual or group enabled to provide a clearer diagram, the image might well appear so strange or unrealistic as to cause fear, alarm, apprehension or some other emotion that responds to the situation with one form of antagonism or another.
The "Standard Cognitive Model" presents me with multiple options for a discussion. For example, it has very many analogies and metaphors which can be applied to initiate a conversation about what is being described by the correlations of Vertebrate anatomy, Sociological class divisions, and the development of early counting efforts. While each of the three can be illustrated without the usage of words, it is with words that we are inclined to describe this set of three references to human thinking that shows itself not only to produce the same ideas with different words and arrangements of those words, but with a similar underlying pattern that we might well describe with numbers and or some diagram, as if the same trail or territory is being navigated in a similar pattern because the human brain functions in identifiably characteristic ways. However, because humanity itself can be described as a non-word "expression" of nature, just like all living things are different expressions as well, each species looked upon as a different word, phrase, paragraph or story has a similar underlying theme denoted by a triple-patterned genetic formula. Similarly, all the different languages of humanity have an underlying triplet code utilizing variations of a Subject- Object- Verb word order arrangement, as well as ending a sentence with a period, question mark and/or exclamation point, though some writers may exclude the usage of punctuation marks such as in the case of some poets.
Let us look at the following reference to poets and punctuation, though it is best not to forget that geneticists often describe the 3 stop codons and 1 start codon as "punctuations". No less, if we wanted to use grammatical language in other subject areas, I am sure one might be imaginatively inclined to apply it to particle physics, chemistry, mathematics, music, art, sports, etc... In fact, there might be instances where the usage of such language is helpful in leading one along a course of discovery.
Question: What does a lack of punctuation signify in a poem?
Answered May 18, 2019 by Bryan Roth, Owner & Editor-in-Chief at RED C (2007-present)
As a poetry editor, I can tell you that the vast majority of the time, the lack of punctuation in a poem signifies a beginner who doesn't know better, or a pretentious wannabe poet who's seen some E. E. Cummings poems without punctuation, so thinks it would be more "poetic" or "artistic" or "avant garde" to write without punctuation. Don't get me wrong, there are poets, like E. E. Cummings, who often didn't use punctuation. Emily Dickinson famously used only dashes—but she clearly knew how to punctuate properly, or she wouldn't have been able to use dashes so effectively. And there are poets like W. S. Merwin, who never used punctuation. Now, Merwin was a very good poet, but as a poetry editor and poetry teacher (and someone who writes poetry myself), I contend that that was an affectation of Merwin’s, and not a good idea—and I'll tell you why.
I believe that content should determine form (which I adapted from the old design adage "form follows function"). Every poem is unique, and has its own needs. So, the choice to use punctuation or not should be made based on what works best for a particular poem—period. I can't believe there aren’t some Merwin poems, at least, that would have been better if they had been properly punctuated. Let’s go back to E. E. Cummings again for a moment. He wrote a poem called "next to of course god America i." The poem contains no punctuation (or capital letters) until the last line, and the lack of punctuation actually helps convey the meaning of the poem. Why? The subject and setting of the poem is a speech, and the poem tries to recreate for the reader of the poem the experience of sitting through a speech (in this case, a very jingoistic political speech). When you listen to a speech, you don’t "see" any punctuation or capital letters. Also, when you’re sitting listening to a speech, your attention often drifts out and in during the speech, so the words may tend to run together in a sort of verbal blur—the lack of punctuation helps convey that experience in the poem. In other words, the form (including the lack of punctuation and capital letters) is determined by the content. I think it’s such a perfect example of this, that I use the poem in my poetry classes. So Cummings had a very good reason—based on the needs of the poem—not to use punctuation. It wasn’t an arbitrary choice because it "looked cool" or "looked poetic," or even because (like Merwin) he had decided that not using punctuation was his "style." It’s all about the needs of the poem.
I myself have written poems without punctuation. Usually—possibly almost always—these are poems that are "interior monologues" where the speaker is remembering something. When you let your mind wander, and you relive a memory, your mind tends to rush from one bit of memory to the next, very seamlessly, so the lack of punctuation tends to reinforce that experience (or such is my intention, anyway!). But most of the time, for most poems—I use standard punctuation, because the poem doesn’t need anything different than that. As Ezra Pound said, "Poetry must be at least as well written as prose." And that means using proper grammar and standard punctuation—unless the needs of the poem are better served by something else. I always tell students that the writing should never distract the reader from what they’re reading—if you are not using punctuation for an arbitrary reason, or on a whim, the reader will be distracted by that—now they are wondering why you aren’t using punctuation, instead of focusing on the meaning of the poem! You have effectively sabotaged your own poem.
I used the above selection by Bryan Roth not because I find him to be an advisable mentor for poetry with an enlarged appreciation of language from an historical and philosophical perspective, but that he provides examples with his version of explaining the necessity for and against the absence of using punctuation. And this is a point that needs to be made about the illustration of a proposed "Standard Cognitive Model." Is it describing three different ideas, phrases, words or punctuations marks? By combining the three different ideas I have created a type of expression with punctuation. Whereas many readers were aware of the three different topics (Vertebrate anatomy, 3 Social class divisions, early counting development) just as they are aware of the words 'home' and 'sweet' (from which are constructed the 3-patterned "home sweet home") or the words people, of, the, by, for (from which is derived the 3-patterned "of the people, by the people, for the people"); the knowledge of the different perceptions were not combined to form any statement. In this case, the "Standard Cognitive Model" is a three-patterned statement about three items. In very many instances a pattern-of-three places emphasis on perceptions such as in the case of the French slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity" used to represent the ideas of individual liberty, human equality and universal fraternity of all peoples.
Yet, time and again the recurring usage of a three-pattern in expressions is dismissed as a coincidence or overlooked because of one's personalized over-bearing pretentious usage of some dichotomy to assert themselves. No less, we overlook non-verbalized three-patterned expressions of nature in the sense we do not correlate them together into an expression from which is derived a greater understanding that the pattern is part of a small array of patterns that the human mind repeatedly uses, and then continue to identify that which influencing human cognition to formulate three-patterned ideas and orientations. Yes of course there are other patterns coinciding such as 1s, 2s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, etc... Yet when we take them all into account, we find that the usage is a limited assortment. And just like the repetitive usage of "three" by many Natural phenomena, or at least our human perception thereof, the repetition is "speaking" to us but linguists do not know how to listen to the language being spoken. While many linguists claim they are experts in language, it is a case like so many professionals who specialize. Their so-called expertise in language is but a small segment of human language activity and not necessarily the "language of the spheres" (contrasted with the old notion "music of the spheres"), which has its own language. Language, that is human language, is not the mother tongue of all languages being spoken by nature. Humanity is so often obsessed with itself it refuses to look beyond the grasp of its own interests in its self. Human language is not the only natural language being spoken by nature. Nature expresses itself in multiple forms as well as communicates in ways humans try to discover and name them "Universal laws" which humanity tries to exploit for its own selfish reasons.
When we find that cellular processes have learned to cohabit and communicate in biochemical ways, our understanding thereof claims it to be significant, but refuses to acknowledge the very many different languages being spoken of by nature. For example, when a virus sometimes speaks, it causes illness and even death on occasion. The same for bacteria. No less, trisomic genetic occurrences can create disfunctionalites, but a confluence of three planets often strikes humanity's consciousness as presenting us with the statement of a great event. Along with this perception let us note that many so-called great ideas occurred by the confluence of multiple ideas made by others, though that which is often derived is sometimes expressed in a pattern-of-three. That is, if we look at those ideas which are expressed pattern-of-three, they were the result of a confluence of multiple ideas. Let us take for example Copernicus:
The Confluence of Some Ideas Used by Copernicus in De Revolutionibus, by Kevin Krisciunas:
Copernicus (1473-1543) first became familiar with ancient Greek astronomy via the Epitome of Ptolemy's Almagest by Georg Peurbach and Regiomontanus (ca. 1463); the full translation of the Almagest was published in Venice in 1515. The Almagest had been translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and Galib the Mozarab. This was completed in Toledo about 1175. How do we know this? From an eyewitness account by the Englishman Daniel of Morley. Copernicus's great book contains a diagram almost identical to one in a work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), the founder of the Maragha Observatory. Copernicus also uses a lemma attributed to a second astronomer who worked in Maragha, Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi (d. 1266). There is evidence that the insights of the Maragha school became known in Byzantium thanks in part to the efforts of Gregory Chioniades (ca. 1240-1320). Copernicus's model of the motion of the Moon is identical to that of Ibn al-Shatir (1304-1375). How much Copernicus's model of the motion of Mercury is similar to that of Ibn al-Shatir is controversial. Recent investigations concerning the Jewish scholar Moses Galeano, who lived in Constantinople, Crete, and the Veneto, lend credence to the notion that the insights of the Maragha school reached Padua in the years 1497 to 1502 thanks to Galeano. This overlaps the very years that Copernicus studied astronomy in Padua. Thus, we now understand how some of the building blocks used by Copernicus were obtained by his teachers or directly by him.
- Publication: American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #233, id.117.06
- Pub Date: January 2019
- Bibcode: 2019AAS...23311706K
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres), written by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and published just before his death, placed the sun at the center of the universe and argued that the Earth moved across the heavens as one of the planets. Copernicus anticipated his ideas would be controversial and waited more than 30 years to publish his book. De Revolutionibus opens with a brief argument for the heliocentric universe and follows with an extensive set of mathematical proofs and astronomical tables. Copernicus was not trying to disparage the accepted wisdom of astronomers and religious thinkers; instead he sought to uncover a more elegant order in the universe. His ideas were revolutionary, but they built on an existing line of thinking. The movement of Mercury and Venus had long perplexed philosophers and astronomers. Plato and Eudoxus noted that these planets never strayed far from the sun; it was almost as if they were tethered to the sun, as they could only move a bit ahead of or lag a bit behind it. In the fifth century, Martianus Capella had argued that Mercury and Venus orbited the sun, which in turn rotated around the Earth. Aristarchus of Samos had proposed a heliocentric system and the Pythagoreans before him had argued that the sun was the "central fire." Although not part of the mainstream, these were all ideas that Copernicus built upon. While Copernicus made revolutionary contributions to astronomy, his conception of the solar system was fundamentally different from that of present-day science. His model still assumed perfect circular motion in the heavens. This meant that, like Ptolemy, he needed to use circles on circles, or epicycles, to account for the movement of the planets. Copernicus's circles were much smaller than those used in the Ptolemaic system, but they still were required to make his model work. Later astronomers, including Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), Galileo (1564–1642), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), all built upon the work of Copernicus to advance humanity’s understanding of the solar system. |
Like those in the past in which the Earth was placed at the center of the Universe, we see the same thing occurring with linguists who place human language at the center of all languages instead of viewing it as one of several, though its position, due to the recurrence of "three" patterns, may indicate it too occupies a third position. At present, it is thought that human language comprises the sole or most important language on a type of Rosetta stone being used by humanity in its efforts to decipher the different language symbols used by different natural phenomena. Another language on the stone is numbers or mathematics, and another language has to do with vibrations and/or the electromagnetic spectrum. However, questions remain: What then is at the center if language, mathematics, electromagnet spectrum, etc., are the planets, and do they follow circular paths as language often presents itself to conventional perceptions? Do all of them have angular motion described by an axial spin? Are they slowing down and is the central entity expanding as the Sun is on a course to do so? Are there separate periodicities? Are there periodic confluences? Do they revolve in the same plane and same direction? Do they revolve at all or exhibit linear, diagonal and/or horizontal movements? Can we plot the movements on a graph? Are the languages part of a larger galactic system of languages or other modes of expression/communication?
In a very broad discussion of language, we must allow for the introduction of pre-word (pre-human) expressions being used by nature in describing repetitive processes that in many cases show themselves to be progressively more complex, like many an adopted and used language in a growing community. Let us suggest that the recurring presence of the Pentadactyl limb structure among vertebrate animals is a means of communication by Nature being viewed as a mute architect whose medium of display is consistent with the habitats in which such dynamic sculptures take place. (Plainly stated: animate forms are being described as artistic sculptures that can move about mechanistically.) This would then be true of birds building nests, bees creating honeycombs, some termites building mounds, spiders creating webs or other kinds of traps, beavers building dams, etc... All of these and others could be viewed as forms of communication by different life forms within the limits of their physiology thrust into a given environment;, though individual vocabularies are very simple and the life form may not consciously be aware of their activity as a form of communication, even if the communication is the use of a pheromone to attract a mate.
Date of Origination: Saturday, 14th March 2020... 6:11 AM
Date of Initial Posting: Sunday, 10 May 2020... 8:50 AM
Updated Posting: Sunday, 1tth May, 2020... 8:29 AM