Evolution

Re: Future Developments
Re: Future Developments -- homer Post Reply Top of the thread Forum
Posted by: Angus Cunningham
07/31/2008, 18:26:32

Author Profile (About author)

Edit
Homer: ".. how does language play a part in understanding?"

Language seems to me to play a huge part in comprehension, and I would say it plays a lesser part in understanding -- a word that I tend to reserve for contexts in which one is understanding the feelings of another. I do this because I think understanding requires the exersize of empathy in a way that comprehension does not.

Homer: "If language cannot evolve in parallel with thought, are we to rely totally on statistics,rational interpretation,and observation?"

I have never doubted that language evolves with thinking. Thought, however, is not thinking. Because they are two different words, I think we are wise to reserve different meanings for "thought" and "thinking". I myself consider a thought to be a recurrence of an idea that has been thunk. Thus Shakespeare's thinking "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so" is now a thought. What he was "doing" to "produce" that thought originally was, in my lexicon, thinking.

Angus Cunningham

Post Reply | Email Friend | Alert Where am i? Original Post Top of the thread Previous | Next | Current page

Evolution