A thought from a tired brain

[avevale_intelligencer]

Twice this weekend I've heard passing references to how great mathematics is and how rubbish language is when it comes to describing stuff. It occurs to me that just at present we can only usefully describe mathematics using language. I wonder if we would ever be able usefully to describe language using mathematics.

(Hat-tip to the inevitable GKC and his metaphor of the lamp-post and the tree, from The Man Who Was Thursday)

In other news, the con went very well, my set went as well as could be expected thanks to help from my bandmates and the brilliant tech crew, and next year the guests will be FanTom WINOLJ and catsittingstill! (I'm fairly sure I can say that now, and nobody else on my flist seems to have revealed it yet.) We've signed up.

More detail when I'm less wiped.

Comments

[hms42]

What is the name of next year's con? And thank you for the guest list.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Quarter tone.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Mathematics is in many ways its own language (as evidenced by the fact that its symbols can be read by native and sole speakers of many different languages (the fact that it's primarily a written language doesn't disqualify it from being a language at all).

I'd say that mathematics is in fact useful for modeling and describing many facets of the world, there are some it still cannot reach effectively (e.g., the mind, and if you will, the soul). For those, other languages, while ALSO inadequate, are better for the purpose.

Glad to hear the set went well; sorry to have missed yet another UK Filk Con (continuing my unbroken streak, which is a world record that I hope to end one of these years), and thanks for the news of next year's guests.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Language is great (or at least the only thing we have) for describing some things. Mathematics is great for describing other things.

And using language to describe mathematics strikes me as being like using a set of crude but general tools to build a set of better tools that are more restricted in scope. They are all still tools, and it doesn't matter if a tool is more refined if it can't be applied to the job you want to do.

[howeird]

My father was a mathematician, and one of the things he did for a living (and for fun) was to translate real world systems into mathematical objects, play with the numbers to get a more efficient system, and translate the results back into English.

He viewed math as a language, and he told me several times that he wished most people "spoke math" so he would not have to do that final translation. Whenever he read a math or physics journal, he would read the formulas first - they would usually tell him more than the accompanying text.

But he would never have suggested that everything could or should be described using math. He spoke English, French, German and Hebrew, as well as math.

[batyatoon]

We had a discussion at a recent family dinner as to whether it is more accurate to describe mathematics as something that was discovered or invented. I came down stubbornly on the side of "invented", reasoning thusly: There are basic truths about the universe that were discovered (e.g., the relationship between the radius of a circle and its circumference). Mathematics is the language that was invented to most usefully and efficiently describe/express said truths.

You can't usefully describe mathematics using language, not really. Get rid of mathematical expressions, and sooner or later you'll have to reinvent them.

Neither mathematical language nor verbal language will ever be able to fully serve the purpose of the other, and discussing which is superior is ... well, just about as pointless as the tree and the lamp-post, really.

And to take that just a little further: maybe we can't see the lamp-post by the light of the tree ... but considering that it's a gas-lamp, how well would it be able to illuminate anything at all if the trees weren't producing oxygen?

[allan doodes (from livejournal.com)]

Mathematics is a precise way of describing things, but it is primarily as written language and can be interpreted into words with difficulty - though I suppose that one could develop a verbal form, though I suspect that humans couldn't speak it :-).

As for the idea that language can be described mathematically ... well there is a field of study called mathematical linguistics which (I gather) tries to do exactly that. I know about this by virtue to a comment I saw in an article I was reading in a book called "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language" by Geoffrey K Pullum, (c) 1991. The comment suggests that the field has not made much progress, and has yet to produce any results worth serious notice.

Of course, the comment is an opinion of a particular linguist over twenty years ago, so it may have been inaccurate then, and there may have a great deal of progress since.

The book is interesting and sometimes light-hearted commentary on the state of linguistics at that time, and does include the only recorded discussion of the subject by Spock with Noam Chomsky. Probably not enough in it to be worth buying (unless you are interested in that subject), but possibly worth borrowing from your local library (if you still have one, of course).

Glad you seem to have enjoyed the con, and I hope Jan did so too. And that the rumour-mill didn't darken your name too much before she was able to appear and stop them :-).