Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)

Dear Google company,

rating in the scientific groups confirms the mainstream
and punishes innovative minds, people who got new ideas
and develop methods that may be asked for in twenty years.

(One can pray without really knowing whether God exists.
I am sighing in the hope that someone of your company will
read my lines. At least I know that you exist. You opened
an agency in my hometown of Zurich.)

Sincerely

Franz Gnaedinger


Life and language (modified version)

A) What is life?

An excellent summary of the present-day knowledge about
the origin of life on Earth is found in the article "First Life"
by Michael Russel in American Scientist, volume 94, 2006
January-February.

In the physical sense, life may be called an organization
of matter far from the thermodynamical equilibrium. Life
needs plenty of energy. Most life forms feed on others,
or on products of others, apart from plants and some
microbes. We humans may one day be able to copy
photosynthesis on an industrial scale, and perhaps even
to produce proteins by means of genetic engineering.

Life appears in organized form. We observe bonds everywhere,
even between predators and prey. Lions get meat from hunting
antelopes, while the populations of antelopes are kept in good
health by lions and other predators. According to the now widely
accepted weak version of the Gaia hypothesis, life on Earth
forms a system that created and maintains the biosphere.
The strong version even claims that life on Earth forms kind
of a super-organism.

Language plays a key role in the organization of life, as you
shall see in the next chapter.

B) What is language? and what is special about human
language? (ideas and insights from 1974/75)

Language is the means of getting help, support and
understanding from those we depend upon in one way
or another --- and every means of getting help, support
and understanding may be called language, on whatever
level of life it occurs..

What is special about human life? the use of artifical things.
And what is special about human language? the use of words
that name artificial things and make us see a world full of
objects: cup, jar, table, floor, wall, window, garden, fence,
road, car, pole, flag ... apple, tree, bird, hill, sky, cloud,
light, nature, human being, life, body and soul ... Humans
succeeded in building tents, huts and houses, and saw the
sky as a giant baldachin or an overarching vault. If one can
form animals in clay, and carve human figurines from wood,
one can also name animals and humans. A statue may be
true to nature, and appear very lively, nevertheless there will
be something missing when compared with a real human
being, and what is missing is called life, as if it were a thing
of its own. Proportions of a figurine evoke the way organs
and members of a living being cooperate, how all elements
of life go together, and the word for this cooperation is psyche,
soul. Using a band you can tie things together, while the word
'and' joins words, German Bund und (similar pairs occur in
ancient Greek and Latin).

Words are sets, while sentences can be understood as
overlapping sets, one of them belonging to the word be.
Or sentences can be given as equations, which can then
be transformed into more specified objetcs:

overlapping sets: ball be round
sentence: The ball is round.
equation: the ball - is - a round one
object: the round ball

overlapping sets: ball be rolling
sentence: The ball rolls.
equation: the ball - is - a rolling one
object: the rolling ball

The more things we use the more specialized our lives
become, and the better we have to explain our personal
situation before we can hope to get our needs satisfied
and our wishes fulfilled. This is the reason why most of
our language describes and explains the world. Never-
theless, all of our language serves needs and wishes.

Question from 2006: May language be considered a basic
feature of life? did the first cells help each other into being?
did they depend in some way on each other?

C) The meaning of life

We are a part of life and can't really look at life from
the outside. Our individual life may follow a long equation
whose last term we don't know. Yes, I am leaving the realm
of the sciences. From now on I rely on experience, intuition
and belief.

What is the meaning of life?

To contribute to life

In past August I got ill and thought my days are over.
Do you know what counts in the end? what one did for
others.

Life, one may say, depends on the living beings. The
language of life may then be a changing tonus on the level
of microbia and plants, feelings on the level of animals and
human beings, especially feelings in an existential situation
such as falling in love, being seriously challenged, facing
the end. When I was ill I made exercises, using my will and
motivation to survive. At the same time I prepared myself to
die. It wasn't fearful, I felt kind of easy and consoled - as if
life thanked me for my contributions.

Contribute to life
in the way you can
and as well as you can

Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

.

Relevant Pages
Quantcast