Quest for colours: what's basic then?- &- Re: Why does the meaning (and spelling) of words change?

    All this talk of what is semantically "basic", etc. brings up the issue
of representation and cognition.
    So... here's a fairly intriguing paper on this very issue & I think it
has some really good underlying points to consider in creating conlangs/auxlangs:

"Does Representation Need Reality? Rethinking Epistemological Issues in the
Light of
Recent Developments and Concepts in Cognitive Science"
by Markus F. Peschl and Alexander Riegler (1997)

 http://www.univie.ac.at/cognition/conf/ntcs97/ntcs97introduction.htm

    I think language - on a simplistic metaphoric level - is both a tool and
weapon for survival that extends and expands by learning, creativity and
"feedback."
    The simple & chaotic hides a vague, "fuzzy, web/network-like" cybernetic
system of dynamically flucuating complex ordering(s), non-ordering(s) and
perhaps even "meta-ordering(s)."

    And even this emergent theory of mine is a metaphoric/metalinguistic
construct (or "conceit") probably based on 1/2-understood ideations.


---
Hanuman Zhang, _Gomi no sensei_ [Master of junk] <A
HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A>

    "To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So,
since living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of
rubbish." ~ ChuangTzu/Zhuangzi, China, 4th Century BCE

    "...So what is life for? Life is for beauty and substance and sound and
colour; and even those are often forbidden by law [socio-cultural conventions].
. .Why not be free and live your own life? Why follow other people's rules
and live to please others?..." ~ Lieh-Tzu/Liezi, Taoist Sage (c. 450- 375 BCE)

    "Taoism in a nutshell: Shit Happens. Roll with the Punches. Hang 10 ~ Go
with the Flow!" ~ anon. California Surfer~Beatnik, c.1950's/1960's

    "[The modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard
of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the
time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' than a man
who consumes less.
    "A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively
irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-
being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being
with the minimum of consumption." ~ E.F. Schumacher, _Small is Beautiful_

    "Western man not merely blighted in some degree every
culture that he touched, whether 'primitive' or advanced, but he also
robbed his own descendants of countless gifts of art and craftsmanship,
as well as precious knowledge passed on only by word of mouth
that disappeared with the dying languages of dying peoples...." ~ Lewis
Mumford, _The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine_

    "Anarchism's great project is to dissolve the asymmetry of power. How?
There are thousands of alternatives and there is not only one solution. To
advance 'one' solution would be a doctrine of power, a manifestation of power." ~
Venezuelan University Academic Alfredo Vallota quoted in _El Libertario_