Language Is Conceived In Sin And Science

Confusion Of Sign And Object Is Original Sin Coeval With The Word.

My Position Is A Naturalistic One; I See Philosophy Not As An A Priori Propaedeutic Or Groundwork For Science, But As Continuous With Science. I See Philosophy And Science As In The Same Boat--a Boat Which, To Revert To Neurath's Figure As I So Often Do, We Can Rebuild Only At Sea While Staying Afloat In It. There Is No External Vantage Point, No First Philosophy.

The Three Main Medieval Points Of View Regarding Universals Are Designated By Historians As Realism, Conceptualism, And Nominalism. Essentially These Same Three Doctrines Reappear In Twentieth-century Surveys Of The Philosophy Of Mathematics Under The New Names Logicism, Intuitionism, And Formalism.

Life Is Agid, Life Is Fulgid. Life Is What The Least Of Us Make Most Of Us Feel The Least Of Us Make The Most Of. Life Is A Burgeoning, A Quickening Of The Dim Primordial Urge In The Murky Wastes Of Time.

We Cannot Stem Linguistic Change, But We Can Drag Our Feet. If Each Of Us Were To Defy Alexander Pope And Be The Last To Lay The Old Aside, It Might Not Be A Better World, But It Would Be A Lovelier Language.