“Language transcends us and yet, we speak.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception
Source: Phenomenology of Perception (1945), p. 349
"Introduction" to the French edition (1974) of Crash (1973); reprinted in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Crash (1973)
“Language transcends us and yet, we speak.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception
Source: Phenomenology of Perception (1945), p. 349
Jay Lemke (1946) American academic
Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 178
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist
Remarks after the Solvay Conference (1927)
Context: I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
Source: 1930s-1951, The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 25
Jay Lemke (1946) American academic
Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 1
Francis Y. Kalabat (1970) American bishop
Chaldean bishop urges solidarity with suffering Christians of Middle East https://cathstan.org/news/local/chaldean-bishop-urges-solidarity-with-suffering-christians-of-middle-east (November 28, 2016)
“We must, for example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas.”
Henri Poincaré book Science and Hypothesis
Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. IX: Hypotheses in Physics, Tr. George Bruce Halsted (1913)
Context: It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, for example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist
Charles West Churchman, Russell Lincoln Ackoff (1950) Methods of inquiry: an introduction to philosophy and scientific method. p. 185; Partly cited in: Britton, G. A., & McCallion, H. (1994). An overview of the Singer/Churchman/Ackoff school of thought. Systems Practice, Vol 7 (5), 487-521.
1950s
Context: … All other languages can be translated into the thing-language, but the thing-language cannot be translated into any other language. Its terms can only be reduced to what are called "ostensive" definitions. These consist merely of pointing or otherwise evoking a direct experience. Hence, the thing-language is absolutely basic. Out of this basic language, we build up the other languages of the sciences, beginning with the language of physics, and proceeding to biology, psychology, and the social sciences.