Alfred North Whitehead quote: “A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.”

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14
Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."
Context: The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.

“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 112
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“We must also point out that it is precisely the metaphysical element of painting that provokes the creation of a physical substance that corresponds to its necessities, a material that permits the metaphysical element to manifest itself in the painted form it desires.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Cirico's text 'A DISCOURSE ON THE MATERIAL SUBSTANCE OF PAINT', 1942 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/541-547Metafisica5_6.pdf, p. 542
1920s and later

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Variant: For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

()
Source: Four Quartets

“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17.
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17
Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

“Their language and the derivations of their language — religion, letters, metaphysics — all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is successive and temporal, not spatial.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Context: Hume noted for all time that Berkeley's arguments did not admit the slightest refutation nor did they cause the slightest conviction. This dictum is entirely correct in its application to the earth, but entirely false in Tlön. The nations of this planet are congenitally idealist. Their language and the derivations of their language — religion, letters, metaphysics — all presuppose idealism. The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. It is successive and temporal, not spatial.

“The fiction of an ideal language composed of pure atomic statements is as metaphysical as the fiction of Laplace's 'spirit'. Scientific language, with its ever growing equipment of systematic symbol formations, can by no means be regarded as an approximation to such an ideal language.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Protocol Statements" (1932), p. 91

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14
Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."

“The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.”

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Alfred North Whitehead 112

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