[lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion

[ravi]

At around 9/12/06 1:45 am, Carrol Cox wrote:
> boddi satva wrote:
>>
>> We want to avoid the practice of making
>> up a lot of new language without any underlying necessity
> 
> You cannot avoid such things IN ADVANCE. I am serious in claiming that
> attempts to avoid such in advance lead to serious repression of thought.
>

Zellberger (a mathematician) recalls the [disputed] story of Euler
"proving" Diderot (I think it was -- composing this off-line so cannot
check) wrong, by using a private language, a mathematical formula, and
claiming to have proved the existence of god, inviting Diderot to
respond. This is the sort of repression of common language and thought
that private languages (and their elevation and autonomy) can create.

	--ravi