Yesterday's New York Times...

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Dear Tom,
frankly said I do not fully understand your negative assessment  of 
recent Funknet postings. Sure, any forum is likely to be misused in 
terms of  - as you say -  "negative insinuations, constant carping, 
posturing, ego-tripping and plain hate". But is this really the case if 
someone makes public a quote from an Italian philosopher, historian and 
jurist whose work has influenced - among many others - the thinking of 
e.g. Benedetto Croce and Bertram Russell? Lenin's appeal to 
self-criticism as a precondition for criticism should in fact not only 
be relevant to public communication as such, but also to our way of 
scientific argumentation. The Vico quote goes in just that direction 
(note the conjunctive /sit/ in "Scientia ipsa humana nihil aliud /sit/ 
ubi efficere ut res sibi pulchra proportione respondeant"). In my eyes, 
the constant self-criticism with respect to one's own scientific 
approach is part of a sound scientific methodology. For instance, if 
someone starts from the basic (ontological) hypothesis that language has 
some kind of 'nature' or is an objective reality of its own, (s)he will 
have to corroborate this hypothesis by again and again checking it 
against the reverse argument, according to which the 'nature' of 
language is a secondary qualification of something fully different based 
on cognitive processes to construe the world. As far as I understand 
Vico, it is just this methodological prerequisite that underlies the 
quote given above. I do not think that reminding people on this forum of 
this problem is an expression of "these repeated ever-so-subtle 
insinuations and negativity about linguistics, and science, and 
linguists", to again use your wording. By the way, after by now nearly 
30 years of work as a professional linguist (sure, with his own 
idiosyncrasies, no doubt), I think that I am allowed to claim that I, 
too, DO linguistics... :-)
Very best wishes,
Wolfgang        

Tom Givon wrote:
> I am, frankly, sick and tired of hearing all these repeated 
> ever-so-subtle insinuations and negativity about linguistics, and 
> science, and linguists. As anyone who has read my works over the years 
> may recall, I have never been all that sanguine about the state of our 
> discipline. It is far from ideal. So are we all, present company 
> included. (Pulling a leaf out of Lenin's work, self-criticism is how 
> we earn the right to criticize others). But, just for the record, I 
> founded FUNKNET 14 years ago as a forum for professional discussion 
> of  substantive issues, for people who actually--maybe, sometime, be 
> it in their spare time--DO linguistics. So I am disgusted at how  it 
> is slowly transforming itself into a forum for negative insinuations, 
> constant carping, posturing, ego-tripping and plain hate. The people 
> at Rice who run FUNKNET nowadays seem to not care about what has 
> become of it. But I can't help still caring. A character flaw, I'm sure.
>
> Y'all be good,  TG
>

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*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang 
Schulze                                                                   
  *

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Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft     

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Katedra Germanistiký        
                                                                              
  

Fakulta humanitných 
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<mailto:Schulze at fhv.umb.sk>                                                                             
 

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