paint it scie nce .

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http://paintitscience.co m/wo rld-pt-2-fo rms/

World pt. 2 Forms

T his is the second part of my considerations on #observation s and f orms (I wrote words bef ore, but f orms f its much better). Lets see where we end up. Link to part 1

While observation most likely precedes dif f erence in the early months of a beings lif e, we can argue that af ter having learned a language dif f erence in f orm of words, signs, symbols is equally structuring our observation. We tend to think of our language as a nearly universal medium (mostly people exclude emotions but thats a dif f erent story) to describe the world. Languages are tools and as every tool they only serve specif ic purposes. To communicate in a language f luently means to be able to work with the world in ONE specif ic way excluding many other ways of interacting with the world. Language as obstacle T he way we learned to understand the world and the way we put it into symbols/words can not only be very helpf ul but also prove to be an obstacle in the way we experience the world. T his is where riddles emerge. Lets take this example:

A father and his son are in an automobile. They have an accident. The father is killed, and the son is rushed to the hospital. A surgeon is called in to perform an intricate operation. When the operation is successfully completed, the surgeon looks at the boys face for the first time and says, I can operate, thats my son! How could that be?

T he most logical answer in this case is usually not the f irst to come to our mind: T he surgeon is a woman. She is the boys mother. T he word surgeon tricks us, because its cultural meaning is closely connected to male persons. In ef f ect, this is described by Marshall McLuhans T he medium is the message cause it means in this case nothing less than that language as medium we use to describe the world is (or better: constructs) a world itself . If we consider language to be using the words of Roman Jakobson a primary modelling system, the world we observe and analyse by using language cannot be more than just a model. Saving the world Now that we f ound out about the probably not so satisf ying f act that language can be obstructive to understand the world in a certain way, we should also know about the other (appearently positive) side of the coin: the use of words as pref ormed concepts can save us f rom f orgetting our observations, at least the ones we are able to ref lect and pronounce explicitely. T hat is because observations we can put into words can become active part of our own lif etime-narrative. Insof ar, learning the use of signs, symbols and words can enable and enhance the way we memorize the world. We can f ind this idea in Ryszard Kapucinskis travel diary Travel with Heredotus:

I understood that every distinct geographic universe has its own mystery and that one can decipher it only by learning the local language. Without it, this universe will remain impenetrable and unknowable, even if one were to spend entire years in it. I noticed, too, the relationship between naming and being, because I realized upon my return to the hotel that in town I had seen only that which I was able to name: for example, I remembered the acacia tree, but not the tree standing next to it, whose name I did not know. I understood, in short, that the more words I knew, the richer, fuller, and more variegated would be the world that opened before me, and which I could capture.

Languages make us shrink

Languages usually appear only usef ul to us when we are able to use them and we can only use them if there are other individuals speaking our language. But as with everything: more individuals means also more points of views, more opinions, thus more diversity also with respect to the def inition of meaning. T he f act that we are able to communicate is a consequence of compromises: we accept and take certain def initions as granted without insisting too much on our own point of view. In other situations we might reject a certain way of communicating (dont do/say that) and by that try to change the way others look at or interact with the world. Anyway, in most situations we dont bother debating def initions and just use our language. T his is when words happen to be self -evident. We could thus argue that the more we feel satisfied with our language the less we become explorers of the world .