[Corpora-List] Do you think LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or ARTS?

[Pascale Fung]

Dear colleagues,

Whether a discipline is science or not depends on the definition of
science. It would be fair to say that anything that claims to be a science
should be based on scientific methods. The definition of scientific
methods is also pretty clear since the 19th century.

For example, according to Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: scientific method
Function: noun
Date: circa 1810
: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge
involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of
data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing
of hypotheses

Whereas I get the beauty of music and the relationship between rhythm and
melody and octaves, harmonics, etc. I would dare say that musicians do not
compose music using the above-mentioned "scientific method". (Whereas
signal processing engineers who analyze music and come up with scientific
hypothesis and then data and then models to classify a piece of
composition as either "music" or "junk" is at least doing science. I
realize how self-serving for engineers this statement could be though.)

As such, if we were doing linguistics using the "scientific method", then
it is science. If not, it is not. This is why there are different
approaches in linguistics.

Having said there, there is nothing judgmental in labeling something as
"science" or "art". Therefore, saying that XXX (e.g. mathematics,
linguistics, music) is not science is simply following the standard
definition of "science", not a criticism.

Of course, one can dispute the definition of the term "scientific method"
today. Then this would be a discussion at a totally different level, and
that discussion itself would be art rather than science as it is defined
today.

Best regards,

Pascale Fung





Dominic Widdows wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Gill Philip
> <g.philip.polidoro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> dear Corpus colleagues,
>>
>> Just while we're off-topic, remember that Cage's 4'33" *proves* that
>> music is music even when there's no sound and no rhythm but only the
>> act of performance.
>>
>
> Alternatively, it proves that Cage is trying to make headlines rather
> than music.
>
> The traditional quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, music, and
> astronomy - an interesting mix that predates our modern idea of
> "science" as distinct from natural philosophy. Any mathematical
> musician worth a grain of salt would have been able to tell Gauss that
> some of the "nice" was because of the relationship between octaves,
> fifths, harmonics, and before you know it you're going straight back
> through Plato to Pythagoras.
>
>
>> Anyway, Yuri's question is interesting.
>> I suppose the anwer depends on what you consider linguistics and its
>> object of study to be.
>>
>> If, like many on this list, you use data samples to study language and
>> meaning empirically, then 'linguistics' is essentially a social
>> science
>> If you prefer to concentrate on language in your mind, then
>> 'linguistics' is a form of philosophy or logic which makes it firmly
>> rooted in the humanities
>>
>
> But papers and books written in this rationalist tradition look like
> more mathematical than Newton's and even Russell and Whitehead's
> "Principia"! It's such a shame that scholasticism turned logic from a
> very practical to a very theoretical subject, when Aristotle invented
> logic I believe it was partly to support his practical reasoning about
> cows and ants and shellfish - the notion that logic and empiricism
> don't go together is a sad tribute to how impoverished the followers
> can become compared with the founders.
>
> To my mind, all this demonstrates pretty quickly that "science or art"
> is an anachronistic post-industrial question. I think a lot of it
> comes from the belief that quantitative research is more likely to
> lead to technological advancement, hence more likely to get funding
> from governments. So if you want jobs you want to be a science, right?
>
> So the difference between calling something science and art is mainly
political.
>
> Best wishes,
> Dominic
>
>
>> And if you're using linguistic data but not doing linguistic analysis
>> or contributing to the study of language, you're probably doing a form
>> of science... but some might argue that you're not doing linguistics
>> either
>>
>> Gill
>>
>>
>> *********************************
>> Dr. Gill Philip
>> CILTA
>> Università degli Studi di Bologna
>> Piazza San Giovanni in Monte, 4
>> 40124 Bologna
>> Italy
>>
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