Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse
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LINCOS DESIGN OF A LANGUAGE FOR COSMIC INTERCOURSE PART I Dr. HANS FREUDENTHAL Profemor of Mathematics University of Utrecht 1960 NORTH -HOLLAND PUB LI SHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM INTRODUCTION 0 01. Scientists, artists and artisans tend to develop a terminology of their own. They use common language as a vernacular that will be enriched, impoverished. and modified in order to serve special purposes. The trans- formation may affect not only the vocabulary but also the syntax of the vernacular, though essential syntactical modifications are rather unusual. It is certain, though far from generally admitted, that the meaning of a linguistic term should be determined by its contexts, it is a matter of fact that there cannot be any reasonably uniform opinion about the meaning of a word, if people cannot agree about the truth of the majority of contexts in which the word occurs. It is a common historical feature of many sciences, that their first representatives tried to create a terminology before the stock of known facts was large enough to provide a sufficiently large context for the elements of that terminology. Even now this is a serious drawback for philosophy and the arts. When people do not under- stand each other, this is usually said to be because ‘they speak different languages’. This may be correct as long as “understanding” means a mere linguistic phenomenon. If understanding means intelligence, one may posit the inverse thesis with at least as much justification: People speak different languages because they do not understand each other. (Note that the word language has here a rather unusual meaning.) As long as there is no reasonable agreement about facts and terminology among those who work in a given field, it seems wise to stick as closely as possible to the vernacular, and not to create any new term until it has become possible to define it in a satisfactory way by a sufficiently rich context. In any case, one should try to abstain from playing upon words as contexts. In the following pages I shall use common English as a vernacular, and I shall endeavour not to use technical terms that are not generally agreed upon or else to provide for a sufficiently rich context or even some- thing of a definitionif I use technical terms of my own. So verbs like “to designate” arid “to mean’’ will have the same meaning as they have in the Vernacular and not that given them in recent publications which might be characterized by the term “formalist semantics”. The use of a few Words will be explained below. 1 2 INTRODUCTION 0 02. The meaning of the word “language” is fairly unambiguous as long as there is no reference to any special language. Generally people agree that somebody who uses English words when he explains some astronomical experiments, is speaking English, but sometimes, especially if one wishes to stress some divergences between the vernacular and the more technical idiom, one says that he uses a special astronomical language. Though borderlines may always be disputed (one may quarrel about the question whether as early as 1250 the monk Robert of Gloucester wrote English and whether nowadays “Beach-la-mar” is still English) “language” in the first sense is one of the best defined notions of contemporary English, whereas in the second sense it is extremely vague. So I will provisionally stick to the customary unsophisticated use of the word “language”. 0 03. We shall have occasions to speak of natural languages. This is a term which may give rise to misunderstanding, as it seems to evoke t,he obsolete idea of one natural language in the dawn of mankind, as t,he germ of our present languages. When nature is opposed to society, then language is rather a social then a natural phenomenon. “Natural language”, however, as meant by us, is opposed to “artificial language”, and as the best-known example of such an “unnatural” language, we may mention Esperanto. Of course natural languages are not absolutely natural, any more than artificial languages are absolutely artificial. Sanskrit is a noteworthy transitional form, though it is perhaps more artificial than natural, but even in our present-day languages conscious influences have directed the spontaneous growth. Orthography in particular has often been the object of attack and the source of a conscious linguistic policy. On the other hand spontaneous growth has been observed in Esperanto, the only living artificial language. 0 04. When dealing with artificial languages we must decide whether codes are to be counted among languages. First of all we shall explain the sense in which we will use the word “code”. In the European languages “code” may denote a collection of laws of jurisprudence, and in some of them “code” is also the system of rules of etiquette. This circumstance may give rise to a terminology in which codes are distinguished from languages by their highly conventional character. In this terminology every artificial language would be a code. I shall not accept this terminology. I shall dist,inguish codes from languages not by a genetic, but rather by a formal criterion. If the meaning of a message is to be kept secret, sender and receiver may use a language that is unknown to other people. Inventing and using brand-new languages is difficult. So they will try to parasitize on a common language. By a well- INTRODUCTION 3 chosen system of superficial transformations they will change that common language into something like a language, that can only be understood by people who are acquainted with the system of transformation rules. This collection of rules is a code in the proper sense (as a juridical code is a collection of juridical rules). If a code X is employed to transform plain English into a less understandable text, we say that this text is written ‘(in Code X”, just as the original text was written “in English”. So “Code X”, which was the name of a system of “coding” rules, becomes the name of the linguistic matter which arises from transforming plain English according to the transformation rules of “Code X”. I do not object to this ambiguous use of “Code X”. The strong dependence of “code language” on ordinary language is stressed by the fact that the same word is used for both the system of ‘(translation” rules and for the result of applying those rules. There is, however, still another word that means only the system of coding rules, viz. the word “key”. The relation between a natural language and a code is not the same as that between two languages. Translating from one language into another is quite different from coding and decoding. Coding and decoding can be done by formal substitution, whereas translating presupposes understanding. Of course this is again a gradual difference. The relation between spoken and written language is similar to that between a language and a code. Writing is like coding, and reading like decoding. Yet the rules that govern the relations between a spoken and a written language, are much more complicated than the rules of any cryptography. The rules of writing and reading are not purely formal such as those of coding and decoding. They can hardly be handled by people who do not understand the language in question, even in languages with a nearly phonetic spelling as Italian and Dutch. Coding and decoding machines can be much simpler than machines for writing down spoken language and for reading written language. Furthermore written language is much more independent of its spoken foster-mother than coded language is of its plain substratum. Spoken and written language may widely differ, and spoken language may undergo profound influences from written language. So it is not surprising that one speaks of spoken English and of written English, as though they were really two languages. The relation between plain English and coded English is quite different from this. Calling coded English a language would not match our customary use of the word “language”. Yet I would agree to coded English being called a coded language. 0 05. A few other linguistic or quasi linguistic phenomena need to be considered. If a traffic sign shows the picture of two children going to school, or that of a fence, the car driver understands these pictures as if 4 INTRODUCTION they were linguistic announcements of a school and of a level-crossing gate. The skull on a bot,tle is to be read as ‘cpoison”,an arrow or a fingerpost may mean “this way”, a stroke of lightning is a warning against high tension wires. Pictures of children, fences, skulls, arrows, strokes of lightnings do not belong to customary English, but everybody knows how to translate them. The analogy with a code is striking. Of course there are differences: codes proper are to be secret, and they are fitted for more general purposes than the traffic-signs code. The common feature of these codes and the codes proper is the existence of a key for coding and decoding. Coding and decoding do not presuppose any understanding, but only the mechanical use of coding and decoding rules which can be collected in some list. An astrologer who casts someone’s horoscope is considering the constellations as coded messages which can be transferred into plain language by adepts who possess the key. Telling the cards, interpreting dreams, looking for the “sigilla” of herbs as practised by herbalists of earlier times in order to recognize the medicinal value of plants, are methods of decoding something that is considered as a message. 0 06.