Links to pages: 44, 46, 49, 51, 52
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George W. Grace
University of Hawaii
October 14, 1981
Science enjoys the reputation of being our foremost strategy for the acquisition of knowledge of reality. I would like to propose that the objective of science--the critical step in the acquisition of knowledge--is the accumulation of true statements about reality. That is to say, knowledge may be said to have been "acquired" just when it has been given a linguistic representation.
I want to point out further that in the process of developing its strategy, science has sought to re-shape and augment human languages for their roles as instruments of representation-as "epistemological instruments", as I will call them. This re-shaping involved the development of special formal "languages"--mathematics and logic--but it also involved attempts to add a particular kind of precision to aspects of natural language. The re-shaping was made in accordance with the philosophy which motivated the science movement, in accordance with that particular conception of the role to be played by this epistemological instrument. However, it is important to realize that human languages were already epistemological instruments long before the advent of the science movement. In fact, as I have attempted to make plausible elsewhere (Grace 1981a, b), it seems probable that it was its function as an epistemological instrument which, more than any other, led to the evolution of language in the first place. But, as I will try to show, ordinary language is a different kind of epistemological instrument in some ways from the kind of instrument that the science movement sought to design. Furthermore, I think that this difference should not be regarded (as is all too customary) as simply revealing shortcomings in ordinary language, but rather as demonstrating that ordinary language was designed for a different epistemological strategy. I believe that these considerations are important to the study of language--i.e., linguistics--in two ways.
The first way in which linguistics is affected is that our view of how language works has been influenced by the attentions which language has received from the science movement. The science movement has wanted languages to be able to function in a particular way which accorded with the epistemological strategy of that movement, and we have come to see languages in the light of those functions. Thus, an accurate understanding of the nature of ordinary language may require a special effort to free our perception from the values of the science movement.
The second consideration of importance to linguistics is that if language did indeed evolve as an epistemological instrument, but as the instrument of a different epistemological strategy from that advocated by the science movement, perhaps there is something to be learned from ordinary language about possible alternative strategies for the acquisition of knowledge. In the rest of this note I will argue that there is, and I will attempt to contrast the epistemological strategy of science with that of ordinary language.
The key technique of the epistemological strategies of both ordinary language and scientific language is what has been called the "construction of realities". What that means is that languages permit us to construct models, and that these models can be, and often are, treated as representative of some aspect of external reality. Thus, we are able to deal with external reality through these representations of it-these constructed realities. That is, we act as if real external reality were like particular constructed realities. If it turns out that it is indeed like them in the right ways, our actions lead to the desired results; if not, our actions fail. In this much, the epistemological strategies of both ordinary language and of science are in the same boat. However, the reality construction strategy of scientific language differs from that of ordinary language.
The objective of science may be described as that of accumulating as many true statements as possible while holding the viewpoint constant. I need to say something about what I mean by "true statement" and by "holding the viewpoint constant". I would suggest that the notion of truth involved in the strategy of science differs from the notion of truth as it occurs in ordinary language use. In science (and in modern information processing generally) it is important to have statements the interpretation of which can be determined with precision without recourse to the context of the speech event. That is, the statements should ideally be understandable strictly on their own. The strategy employed for achieving this context-independence has been that of attempting to define the constituent terms in such a way that each term can be conceived of as corresponding to a class of possible referents. The "meaning" of a term is often thought of as nothing more nor less than criteria adequate to determine whether or not a particular individual belongs to a particular class of this kind. That is, if you make the right class assignments, you know the meaning, and vice versa. Meanings in this conception really correspond to extensions, what the speaker is supposed to know under the rubric "meaning" is how to determine whether or not an object encountered at a particular time and place falls within this extension. That is, the extension--which is really what is of interest in this conception--is a sort of projection which the "meaning" (the criterial attributes) is designed to make. The scientific conception of truth is, in effect, an extension as well--in this case the extension of a statement. It is the class of conditions under which the statement would qualify as true. The definition of such classes of conditions depends in turn upon the classes of conditions in which the constituent terms of the statement can denote. I would like to propose that such a conception of truth belongs to the languages of science and information processing, and that it is irrelevant or nearly so in ordinary language. I do not know of any studies of the matter, but I would like to suggest as a beginning point for discussion that the main distinctions in ordinary language are between, on the one hand, deliberate falsehoods or statements containing significant mistakes, and on the other, that which is neither falsehood nor significantly mistaken, whether the latter be technically true or technically false. I hypothesize that it will generally be found that technically false statements are corrected only when their error is such as to have an effect which is significant for the objectives of some of the people involved in the speech event. I hypothesize further that (except where deliberate falsehood is being suggested) little distinction will be made in such cases between revising a statement and amplifying it--that is, between errors of commission and of omission. If there were any reason to be interested in the notion of truth in ordinary language, I would suggest that the best approach might be to start with the concepts of falsehood and of mistake and to define truth as that which is neither falsehood nor mistake.
I said that science seeks to accumulate true statements while holding the viewpoint constant. What I mean by "holding the view point constant" is that it is regarded as desirable for any subject matter domain to have, if possible, one general ("unified") theory which explains all observations made about objects in that domain and predicts future observations. All of the observations are placed within one constructed reality--one model of the domain. Thus, there is an accumulation of true statements such that the relation of each statement to all of the rest is either immediately apparent or readily deducible.
To produce such a model, or at least to extend it beyond the observations which first suggested it, often requires considerable ingenuity. Some such models and theories rank among the most impressive achievements of mankind, and they have proved to be enormously beneficial when they are appropriately applied. However, it is also true (as is so often pointed out by representatives of the other of C. P. Snow's [1959] two cultures) that science does not tell us all there is to know about the phenomena with which it deals. In fact, the one-perspective treatment is really appropriate to situations of just one kind--those in which our interactions with the relevant segment of the environment are initiated by us and remain under our control. A good example would be our relation with natural resources when we are extracting and processing them for commercial use.
It is different when we lack such control and are unable to foresee which aspect of the phenomenon is likely to present itself to us next. It is also different when our interest in the phenomenon is of various sorts, so that we will want to seek out different perspectives on it. The latter is the case, for example, in dealing with human social relations or with the phenomena of the mind. Language itself is such a phenomenon. I have been arguing for some time (beginning with the book which finally came out in 1981 and the notes which led up to it) that the model of language structure with which linguistics habitually works is not helpful in promoting understanding of some aspects of language functions. For example, it does not provide a very good vantage point for considering the aspect of language functioning which I am concerned with here--its functioning as an epistemological instrument.
Ordinary language, I would like to suggest, seems to be designed precisely for the kind of situation where different perspectives are desirable. In fact, one of the striking characteristics of ordinary languages (striking, that is, if one looks at them from the right angle) is that they provide the means for constructing an infinite number of different realities--i.e., different models. That capacity is exploited most conspicuously in some kinds of experimental literature where novel perspectives play a central role--novel perspectives so abstract sometimes that it is exceedingly difficult to say what they are perspectives of.
It seems to me that literature, or at least some tendencies in modern literature, involves a particular kind of specialization of language just as does the scientific-information processing approach. I would suggest that whereas science aims at the accumulation of true statements from a constant viewpoint, much of literature aims at (to adopt John Dewey's [1934] theory of aesthetics) the proliferation of experience. That is, it vicariously makes available to the reader reality constructs of unexpected sorts and thereby provides a broadened range of experience (as does play).
I have suggested that the most important function in determining the evolution of human language was the function as an epistemological instrument, and I suggested further that the epistemological strategy for which ordinary language was adapted was different from that of scientific language. What kind of strategy, then, does ordinary language imply? I propose that, rather than a strategy aimed at the accumulation of true statements from a constant point of view--as with scientific language, the strategy of ordinary language was aimed at many-faceted acquaintance. It was aimed, not so much at knowledge of facts in the form of statements ("knowledge-that"), as at familiarity with and understanding of the domain of phenomena in question. This is the kind of knowledge that one has of a person whom one knows well-- the ability to sense the person's moods, to supply what has been left unspoken, etc. Or, even more to the point, it is the kind of knowledge that is being ascribed to someone when he/she is characterized as a "professional" (especially when the characterization is abbreviated to "pro") in his/her own field of expertise. The kind of knowledge attributed to the "pro", I believe, is that which is manifested in the ability to deal with any situation which may arise within his/her own domain of expertise. That is, the pro has experienced many aspects of the phenomena of that domain, and when confronted with a new aspect, can quickly orient him/herself and--putting together a suitable model representing the phenomena as perceived from this new aspect-- improvise a suitable response.
I am suggesting that knowledge of this sort is often needed, that it has been important throughout human history, and that it is not the sort of knowledge which the scientific epistemology is designed to produce. The epistemological strategy of ordinary language, however, with its capacity for representing a large variety of different perspectives on the same phenomena, seems ideally suited to the acquisition of knowledge of just this sort.
These questions seem important enough as it is, but they may become even more important if imminent trends should move them further toward center stage in human concerns. It has become customary to think of ourselves as living in a "Modern era" the beginning of which is usually placed in the seventeenth century. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this era has been the belief in science as a uniquely suitable route to the acquisition of knowledge and, consequent upon this belief, the development of institutionalized science. There are signs that we are nearing the end of that era, and that the role of science in its present form is one of the aspects of the era which is destined to change. Not that science itself has been discredited; it has not. But its limitations, as compared with the increases in our perceived needs for knowledge, are becoming more apparent.
There are indications that we are on the verge of an era of increased methodological open-mindedness. I expect that the opposition between science and art will be at least partially overcome--that the gap will be bridged by various attempts to balance rigor with many-sidedness. I used to like to depict the pursuit of knowledge as involving a difficult passage between the Scylla of triviality (investigation of questions lacking in significance) and the Charybdis of irresponsibility (investigations lacking in rigor). That is, it is difficult to seek answers to the most significant questions without abandoning some of the requirements of the most fastidious rigor, while, on the other hand, it is difficult to maintain the most exemplary rigor without diverting one's attention to questions of something less than the most compelling significance.(1)
The extreme solutions to the dilemma thus posed would be (1) to be uncompromising about the pursuit of significance, letting the cost to rigor be what it must, or (2) to be uncompromising about rigor in the conduct of research, with the questions chosen for investigation being only as significant as the methodological requirements would permit. On the whole, the choice has not posed itself to the same extent as a dilemma in the physical sciences where significance is often more narrowly defined or defined in terms of more focused objectives. However, there also awareness of such epistemological concerns is increasing. But in the areas of human affairs something approaching a dichotomy has arisen with art (both as a means and as an object of study) opposing itself to science. In these areas of knowledge art has sometimes seemed to pursue significance in utter disregard of rigor while science has seemed to some to be willing to dwell on any kind of triviality as long as it could be proclaimed that high standards of rigor were being maintained. The future trends which I am predicting will need to explore the ways through the middle ground between the two extreme paths with a view to responsible investigation of a much wider range of questions.
It has been my purpose here to point to language as the natural epistemological instrument of our species, and to recommend that there is much to be learned by studying it as such. I have suggested that the demand for that which could be learned might become particularly great if the directions in which the pursuit of knowledge is destined to move are as I have guessed.
As a final point, one possible market for such enhanced epistemological sophistication might be linguistics itself. As I suggested above, language is a sort of object of which we would want to have a more than unilateral kind of knowledge.
1. What is essentially the same dilemma is sometimes described as that of choosing whether a scientific discipline is to conceive of itself as defined by its subject matter (and therefore committed to pursue it wherever it leads and by whatever means are required) or by its methodology (and therefore determining the boundaries of its subject matter in terms of appropriateness of particular subject areas to the methodology). Back up
Dewey, John. 1934. Art as experience. New York: Minton, Balch, and Co. Back up
Grace, George W. 1981a. An essay on language. Columbia SC: Hornbeam Press.
Grace, George W. 1981b. Ordinary language. ms. Back up
Snow, C[harles] P. 1959. The two cultures and the scientific revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Back up
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