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Re: science and language

Posted by Russ Abbott on Apr 22, 2013; 5:21pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/How-do-forces-work-tp7582853p7582901.html

How would you say "E = MC^2" without language?

 
-- Russ Abbott
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  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

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On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 9:51 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

I agree that the closure of the feedback loop between peeking and poking
(experimentation) is the root of science.  Of course, perhaps that's not
much of a statement _if_ that's the root of everything, as maybe the
autopoiesis guys might claim.

An interesting question is what would the _medium_ look like for a
language-less science?  Can we imagine an alternative reality where some
form video sprouted from cave paintings, through comic strips, to
movies, without written language?

Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/22/2013 09:41 AM:
> A really interesting exchange.  It feeds into my conversation with my Peirce
> Mentor about science being at its root experimentation and experimentation
> being, at its root, poking the world with a stick.  ("It walks like a duck,
> it quacks like a duck.  Does it squawk like a duck? [poke!] Yes.  It's a
> duck!")  I render this in language, but the whole thing could be done
> without language at all, unless one is one of those people who insists that
> all thought is in language.


--
=><= glen e. p. ropella
Broadcast dead revolution don't pay


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