lbo-talk-digest V1 #4706

[Lawrence]

> And no one has thought it necessary to justify coining this term. I had
> forgotten it, but being reminded of it, I am a bit more suspicious of
> the term 'praxis,' since 'commuicative action' seems yet another in the
> unending series (going back to the late 19th century) of attempts to
> dematerialize materialism, of subverting the fundamental assumption of
> all real knowledge, the priority (in principle and in chronology) of
> motion to thought

Surely things have to be imagined first, before they can be built? As I sit
here in my house and look around the room I don't see anything that hasn't
been built, and even the simplest objects have had to exist in someone's
mind before they could exist in reality. My lamp, my telephone, my iron
frying pan, all were imagined before they were built. Some of these objects
were too complex to be built by one person, therefore several people needed
to work together, and to work together they needed to use language. The
limits of their language limited the extent they could work together, even
as the strengths of their language allowed them to accomplish what they
accomplished. All languages have limits, and those limits, in every era,
operate as a limit on what can be built in that era. It seems clear to me
that all the technical progress of the last 10,00 years has been, very
largely, the progress of language. And when researchers examine the universe
and discover new things, for every new concept they invent they must find a
new word to represent that concept. Thus research constantly expands the
number of words we have at our disposal; the importance of this being that
language thus constantly expands the number of concept we have at our
disposal.

This process of growth through language becomes especially clear when you
consider computer languages, such as Fortran, COBOL, C, Java, or Tcl. The
language allows what can be built. The programs written today could not
easily, if at all, be written in COBOL. New languages, such as Java, are
constantly being invented to take advantage of computer's every increasing
speed. Using the newest language, such as C#, a programmer can create things
that are beyond the imagining of an experienced COBOL programmer. The
important phrase is "beyond the imagining". Some languages don't allow you
to daydream about certain things.

If you'd like to build a world of peace and prosperity, a world with few
wars and much democracy, you'll need a new language. Our current language is
adequate only for the current world.

--Lawrence Krubner