Re: something i found interesting...

On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Cathy Whitlock wrote:

> yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:
>
>  ToK!  Are you doing IB?  I got my diploma 3 years ago.  :-)
>
> YES! I am in IB hehe, fun fun!
<wry g>  Good luck.  I took *all 6* exams my senior year.  Fun.

>  <<<Hmm.  Can we know something we can't put into words?  I know I've had the
>  *sensation* of knowing something that then took me several minutes, or
>  even several hours (...the latter more often with math proofs), to
>  articulate in words.  I'd tentatively say yes, but that's just from my
>  own feelings, not anything rigorous.  :-( >>>
>
> Its an interesting paradox- how would human beings have developed if we never
> invented a language? would we still be grunting and pointing to things
> because of the lack of words to describe them, or would we have evolved a
> higher form of communication?
Higher form, such as?

Piers Anthony in _Omnivore_ posits, frex, that this one group of aliens
evolved telepathy, but this hindered their development of intelligence
because there was no need to "think harder" to communicate.  I found this
an intriguing idea in middle school.  I don't know how it would hold up
today.

> <<< This also depends, I suppose, on how you define "knowledge."  If I know
>  how to play a piece on the piano (I have some 50 memorized, though I'm
>  out of practice), does a verbal description suffice to encapsulate that
>  knowledge?  Would you count musical transcription as "words"?>>>
>
> Personally- yes, I would count musical transcription as words- music can be a
> language of its own, most definitely! I think it seriously rivals math as the
> international language, but, then again, I'm not exactly a math fan!
Mostly western music--the stuff *is* pervasive (you know it's bad when
you hear Korean rap...and while I find rap an interesting if sometimes
ear-hurting type of expression, the Korean language transitions
*horribly* into rap, at least to my unrefined aesthetic tastes)--but I'd
hesitate to call it completely international.

Math--depends.  If you're talking the kind of math taught in colleges,
then yes, there are certain notational conventions, etc. and
mathematicians can usually make themselves understood to each other.  The
caveat being that there really aren't that many college-type
mathematicians (or people in allied fields) all told, and mathematicians
in different subfields (algebraic topologist vs. combinatorics, or maybe
even more exotic subfields) often can't understand each other at all.

> <<< On a related note, sometimes I know perfectly well what something means
>  in Korean but can't figure out how to translate it into English (the
>  reverse problem doesn't bother me as much since my Korean vocabulary is
>  much less extensive than my English vocabulary).
>
[snip]
> fans. (Z!) I definitely think that being fluent in more than one language
> makes it easier to think, you can draw on more than your primary language in
> your thoughts in order to fully explain that feeling of knowing what you
> yourself mean but may not be apparent to others until you can sufficiently
> explain it to them! On a side note, was Korean your foriegn language for your
> IB exams?
>
Agreed.  :-)  And no, Korean wasn't my foreign language; I don't know it
that well, unfortunately, even though it *was* the first tongue I spoke
and wrote!  I did French IBH.

YHL