Language and science

Human societies are not different from insect societies.

If there really exist essential differences, it is not because we have anything that insects can't have. It's just because "We are human beings". And, since we are human beings not insects or other animals, we can only understand the languages of human.

Even though brilliant biologists can figure out whether pheromone or behaviors constitute the language of wasp society, they are still not able to know how the reformation of the language change the societies. But we, human beings, know the key roles of human language.

Therefore, the rift between humanity and science is not just due to the methodology they use--objectivity or subjectivity, interpretation or explanation, experience or experiment. Rather, it is because of the language boundary, the rift between human and nature is impossible to repair.

So, what is modern science? It is a knowledge-creating method of which the foundational limitation is the inability to deal with the role of language.

記 2009.11.6 R.G.演講