form without meaning

Mark Durie M.Durie at LINGUISTICS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU
Sun Jan 19 05:33:25 UTC 1997


John Aske wrote:

>Here I feel compelled to bring up an analogy from another science and I
>hope I won't be unduly chastised for my boldness and my ignorance.  I
>just can't imagine that a biologist, for example, would attempt to
>describe a particular organ in some organism without at the same time
>attempting to understand its function (what it's for), how it may have
>gotten to be the way it is, what it does, how it does it, how it
>interacts with other organs of the body, and how it compares with the
>way other organisms perform those functions.

Yes they have done this, but still acknowledging the difference between the
two kinds of task.  Anatomy is the study of structure.  Physiology is the
study of function.  The history of medicine shows that quite different
methods and methodological difficulties were involved to explore the two
areas.  (The anatomists had the problem of getting enough bodies to
dissect, and the physiologists had to get used to the idea of
experimentation.)  But it also shows that advances in understandings of
structure and function influence and help advance each other in very
complex ways that are hard to plan for or categorize.

Mark Durie

------------------------------------
From:  Mark Durie
       Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
       University of Melbourne
       Parkville 3052

       Hm  (03) 9380-5247
       Wk  (03) 9344-5191
       Fax (03) 9349-4326

M.Durie at linguistics.unimelb.edu.au
http://www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/Dept/LALX/staff/durie.html



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