Against Science


It occured to me recently that what I really think about linguistics
is that it takes all the fun from language.  I had been trying to pin
down this sentiment for some short while, it having begun to gnaw at
my conscience some time during my recent half-serious enrolment in a
linguistics course at the University of Auckland.

I have friends who are more immersed than I in the subject, and during
this period I had tried at various points to enunciate my feelings in
their presence; but saying I hate linguistics in a room full of
linguists is not endearing.  Nor was it quite the right formulation,
but I feel that perhaps I have now arrived at my true feelings and
that if my conclusion that linguistics takes all the fun from language
does not explain me to my friends, then perhaps the essay which
follows shall.

Perhaps it may also explain me to other types of scientist.
Scientists are very popular people; many people like to think of
themselves as scientists.  Science is authority.  Science is a way to
cope with today's mass society just as religion was a way to cope with
the world which dwarfed earlier societies.  The world is shrinking,
has shrunk: it took science to do it, and now it takes science to bear
it.

And because it's so popular, anything can be a science.  Everything
_strives_ to be a science, 'cause then it's extra cool.  With science
you've got data and induction and technology and journal articles and
lab coats: with science you can back shit up.

Linguistics is the science of language.


I enjoy language.  I have a degree in Latin not because I found the
content of the ancient works especially fascinating but because I took
an interest in the language.  In accordance with the cliche, Latin
improved my English and my critical thinking skills, or perhaps rather
only nurtured interests in those areas which I already had.  I like to
think that I have a good command of English, of Latin, and of the
language of critical thought: logic and mathematics.  What I enjoy
about language is being able to really _use_ it.  I use my knowledge,
my _scientia_ of language to play.
   But linguistics wants me to play by the rules.  And I'm
not talking about prescriptivism: linguistics doesn't want to posit
the rules, it wants to find the rules by which I play.  Linguistics
figures language can be compassed.  And perhaps it can.  And if it
can, perhaps linguistics is what will succeed in compassing it.

But I want no part in that.  And I don't really want to hear about
that.

Linguistics haunts me.  Linguistics is like sports commentary: the
players block it out; and for the spectators, though a particularly
insightful comment here or there may illuminate an interesting aspect
of the spectacle, it is largely a poor paraphrase of what is already
before their eyes.

Rather than an appreciation of language through science I propose an
appreciation of language by intelligence.  This is not intended to
have me come off as aloof.  It is rather, unfortunately, a product of
that education in Latin I talked about.

‘Science’ comes from _scientia_, Latin for ‘knowledge’.  This may at
first seem quite far from our understanding today of the word
‘science’.  Indeed, I had up until recently thought that the
distinction which I felt lay at the core of my unsure sentiments about
science was that between the original meaning and today's.

But delving deeper into the etymology we find that the Indo-European
root of all these words means ‘cut’; that is, _scientia_ is knowledge
as _distinction_, _dissection_, _division_.  And with this notion
understood the tie to the dreaded scientific method becomes obvious.
Science as we know it is all about slicing things up, developing the
most fine-grained analysis.  Whether we are slicing up tangible
objects or just ideas determines whether we are ‘doing’ Natural
Science or Social Science.

Okay, now let's look at the word ‘intelligence’.  It comes from
_intellego_, Latin for ‘understand’.  I like this.  I am not pleased
when a test confirms some hypothesis of mine: I am pleased when I
_understand_ something.  I exult not with bloody scalpel dripping over
my opened subject but when I have gone to the heart of it and back and
still the subject lies intact upon the table.

Understanding something is a difficult emotion to describe.  In the
natural sciences it is realizing the causes behind observed phenomena.
In mathematics it is not merely following the proof along but grasping
the thinking behind the proof and the implications thereof.  In
language it is comprehending the utterer's aim.  I rate understanding
far ahead of knowing.

But as with ‘knowledge’, we can delve deeper.  _intellego_ comes from
_inter_ + _lego_, ‘between’ + ‘choose’; that is, to discern rather
than distinguish, to root out the deeper meaning of something.

I also note that _lego_ was also the word the Romans used for ‘read’:
when one reads one picks out the meaning from the words on the page.
Or, one may say that understanding is ‘reading between the lines’.

This is my preference.  Language is for understanding, not for
knowing.  Same for the natural world.  Same for mathematics.

Science calls for the slicing up of its subject; Intelligence for a
sensitivity to it.  A delving into it, but with out violence to it.
And when you slice something up you lose its essence, its joyousness.
Hence my conviction that science takes all the fun from its subject.
For me that loss is especially painful when inflicted by linguistics.


Well, an astute reader will note I've committed a terrible
etymological fallacy.  I am shameless about this.  In fact, my
argument for the legitimacy of such a fallacy is itself an
etymological fallacy: the word ‘etymology’ comes from the Greek
_etumon_, ‘true meaning’ + _logia_, ‘the study of’.  I in perhaps a
rather romantic fashion cling to this type of thing.  It helps me feel
I'm really _using_ language.  Not that I'm using it correctly, not in
a snooty kind of way, but that I mean my words with their original
force and vigor.

Well, as I say: romantic.  Words wither and die.  I may think I'm
using words like ‘be’ and ‘have’ and ‘may’ and ‘shall’ and ‘will’ as
full, powerful verbs, but to everybody else they are just weedy
auxiliaries contributing nothing to the semantics of the sentence and
only plugged in to little formulae for communicating something like
tense or mood.  I may think ‘science’ means knowledge by dissection,
but everybody else just thinks of nerds in lab coats or, if they are
such a nerd theirself, perhaps of science as the application of the
scientific method.

So, to satisfy perhaps nobody, I'll take linguistics on from another
angle.


Accounts of language are vampires but they don't wear make-up and they
don't turn into bats in puffs of smoke: they are the boringest
vampires out, just sitting around sucking the lifeblood out of
language.

Sciences like that word ‘account’.  Count von Account, supreme vampire
lord of the sciences does not even sink his teeth into his attractive
victims in appropriately theatrical manner, but remains in his crypt,
fed by a drip.
   A linguist is a magician who's always willing to
tell his trick.  And if he's really clever, he'll sell his trick, too.
A real user of language never tells: he puts it out there and those in
the know know and they nod.  An ace linguist is content to sit and
notice, and to nod.  Hey, look what's going on here, that's pretty
cool, clever, interesting, whatever.

And that don't mean an ace linguist is restricted to butterfly
catching.  Such a person can go straight for the throat of what's
happening in an utterance.  Such a person can see the subtleties and
the complexities, but it is what such a person does with them that
matters.  A straight linguist'll separate out the threads of the
complexities, hack away until the subtleties are standing there naked
in the sun and now a little bit embarassed.

But my ace linguist lifts not the scalpel blade nor wields the hammer
that unifies and flattens; my ace linguist, bless her heart, laughs
and winks,

And can explain it to you if she has to.