LINGUIST List 5.1265

Wed 09 Nov 1994

Disc: Linguistics as "science"

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1. Dan Alford, Lx as *Science*?

I accept the editors' recent challenge for resuming last year's thread
(which I missed, before subscribing) on whether linguistics is/should
be considered a science -- by which I am assuming everyone means
Newtonian *science* rather than the Quantum/Relativity science
which has been current during this century. [N1].

I will argue 1) that while much of our work is *scientific*, much of
our work goes beyond the traditional definitions of *science*; 2) that
being categorized solely as *science* is to our long-term professional
detriment; 3) that we are uniquely positioned to aim higher.

Academics over the centuries have used various prestige words when
desiring to assert their rigor. *Scientific* is such a word today, and has
been a prestige word since the early 1800's when it replaced
*philosophical* as the term academics use when indicating some
ultimate in rigor and truth. And well before that, in seventh-century
Rome, Boethius and others used *logical* as their prestige word. [N2]

I'm confident this is not the sole reason for most linguists' claim that
linguistics is a *science*. But for those few for whom it is: saying it's
*rigorous* is sufficient to describe that side of our work.

Perhaps instead our discipline is looking for professional prestige and
advancement in academe, and aligning politically with *science* is
seen as the best strategic move. [N3] Is this a reason? If so, perhaps we
can talk together about it out loud rather than it remaining as a
professional assumption.

But there are other reasons we might consider giving up *science* as a
label -- including our unique perversity in cultivating the process of
working with meaning. A physicist friend once told me that if physics
had to deal with the dimension of meaning(s) as well as everything
else it deals with, physics could no longer be a science. [Greg Derry,
personal communication]. Newtonian physics was long held as the
model of hard *science*, and all of its principles exclude(d) meaning.
But so do the principles of 20th-century physics.

Is any linguist ready to give up meaning (including the systemic
meaning of structure) in order to be *scientific*? Is linguistics not at
least as much art as science? Can anyone provide me a good reason for
categorizing linguistics as science in the context of these remarks?
Isn't there something more INCLUSIVE we can aim toward? But
where's our model in the social/soft sciences?

Actually, linguistics is the best potential candidate for such a new,
meaning-full model of science. Other disciplines have been watching
us for decades. After all, we train in our methodologies for a very
delicate balancing act in consciousness between form and meaning
(i.e., when doing historical work, we compare forms even from other
languages, but we can't stop with that -- we must also be aware
whether they have changed semantic categories, etc.).

This is what some in other disciplines would call a SYSTEMS
approach, which goes beyond modern structuralism [N4]. Like the
complementarity principle in physics, form and meaning in linguistics
are complementary (not polar) opposites, both necessary for the total
system to work properly.

Alas, our own theories are another matter. Because of the
terminological shackles of a meaning-less *science* that some would
place on our discipline, we continue to use the dead metaphors of that
meaning-less *science* in our attempts at meaning-full theory
building. [N5]Notice how we have historically treated those who
urged us to move our theories to the level of our methodology -- to the
level of systems thinking: which describes a world of uncertainties and
mutual interdependencies rather than mono-certain anything; or
chaotic 'attractors' pulling events toward them into material
manifestation [N6], instead of one thing directly causing another.

Whorf took one step, in transforming Einstein's relativity principle
from the more limited geometry focus to the larger focus of human
language in general, which he called the linguistic relativity principle.
[N7]

That physics has in this century been dealing with deep linguistic
questions has unfortunately been lost on most linguists. And the
deeper mergers of language and philosophy have been ignored
for universalist perspectives in the latter half of this century [N8].

And linguistics departments are closing as the rest of academe
ruthlessly renders its own self-serving judgement: linguistics is
becoming irrelevant, a "pseudo-science", in the late 20th-century.

Please understand: I am in no way against the *scientific* mode of
linguistics -- it is uniquely appropriate to studying form. It is not,
however, appropriate to studying meaning, for obvious reasons. The
answer is not to let the part overwhelm the whole such that our entire
discipline becomes *scientific*, but to accept the challenge and
develop theories and principles of a meaning-full science that other
disciplines will so admire that in the 21st century they will start
claiming to be *linguistic* as a way of claiming ultimate rigor in their
search for truth.

**** NOTES:

[N1] I assume this because of the way all the social sciences treated
Whorf, who was attempting to tell them that the very definition of
*science*/science was changing underneath their certainties. If it were
otherwise, we wouldn't need this discussion.

[N2] Dineen on Boethius: "Logic became the prestige study of the
day, the medieval's most precise and respected intellectual tool. It held
the same position in the intellectual world then that science holds now:
serious study today must be 'scientific'-- then it had to be 'logical'".

[N3] However, as one Christian de Quincy wrote recently, "[M]ost
scientists do not recognize the limits of science, nor do they want to.
There is a power given to the society that supports science. If one were
to take the power and possession [of science] away from the
corporations and politicians, what would be the standing of science in
society?"

[N4] ... and what some consciousness anthropologists would call a
'shamanic stance', balancing with a foot in both worlds. Eastern
philosophers would probably talk about the interpenetration of Yin
and Yang within the Tao, as David Bohm found out in his dialogues
with J. Krishnamurti.

[N5] including such pre-Relativity/Quantum *scientific* vocabulary
as 'cause' and 'determine' (especially when linked, as in monocausal
determinism!). We even try to project these dead *
metaphors onto people using systems thinking (e.g., Sapir, Whorf,
Pike, Lamb).

[N6] per current Chaos Theory in mathematics, for those who like to
use mathematics in their linguistics theories.

[N7] Einstein also had the larger language issues in mind, which he
talked about in a 1941 radio speech ("What is it that brings about such
an ultimate connection between language and thinking? ...the mental
development of the individual and his way of forming concepts
depend to a high degree upon language. This makes us realize to what
extent the same language means the same mentality.").

[N8] There is so much more that needs to be done in interesting areas
such as how reason and logic and philosophy grow out of the
grammars of languages. Most are not aware, for instance, that the
word 'karma' -- long before it was a term of Eastern philosophy
denoting the process of what goes around comes around with emphasis
on the 'comes around' experiential phenomena -- was a term within the
system of Sanskrit linguistics meaning 'direct object of verb' [James
Ryan, Sanskrit & philosophy scholar, personal communication then
presentation at Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, 1992].
What might a well-articulated philosophy of animacy from Native
American languages look like?

 -- Moonhawk (%->)
 <"The fool on the hill sees the sun going down and>
 <the eyes in his head see the world spinning round">
 <-- John Lennon>