ThinkBlog

Tonight I was at a birthday party, and everyone began talking about hermeneutics (without using the word expicitly) and the nature of language. The main thrust of the conversation centered around the idea that if language were perfectly expressible in, for instance, mathematics or mathematical terms, then we would lose something of the foundational “good” of language.

Then the discussion turned to the matter of whether a mathematical language would be able to convey nuance, and whether this was important.

We never got anywhere. Now, I’m odd in that I’m a philosophy major who likes to get somewhere, probably; but this conversation just highlighted for me the whole matter of the way everyone has something to say, and no one listens. It was convicting, really: how often do I pine for a willing ear only to play the part of the overfull mouth? How often do you, gentle reader?

Tonight I was at a birthday party, and everyone began talking about hermeneutics (without using the word expicitly) and the nature of language. The main thrust of the conversation centered around the idea that if language were perfectly expressible in, for instance, mathematics or mathematical terms, then we would lose something of the foundational “good” of language.

Then the discussion turned to the matter of whether a mathematical language would be able to convey nuance, and whether this was important.

We never got anywhere. Now, I’m odd in that I’m a philosophy major who likes to get somewhere, probably; but this conversation just highlighted for me the whole matter of the way everyone has something to say, and no one listens. It was convicting, really: how often do I pine for a willing ear only to play the part of the overfull mouth? How often do you, gentle reader?