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

[Jim Fidelholtz]

Hi, everybody,

Well, I was trained as a scientist (at MIT-- Pavlov method ;-)  ). While
nobody seems to like to talk about it much, it is clear to me that any
decent scientist requires a great deal of ART, which we sometimes hear
called 'intuition' or other names, like 'luck'. Of course, for example, to
win the Nobel prize requires not just being a good scientist and applying
'art', but also luck (being in the right place at the right time, etc.). But
even the latter won't help a potzer who lacks  the 'good taste' to know what
to look for.

Jim

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 5:16 AM, Gilles Serasset <Gilles.Serasset at imag.fr>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> On 23 mars 10, at 10:22, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote:
>
> Dear Corpora colleagues, Do you think LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or ARTS? I
> think the discussion about linguistics using either the scientific or
> artistic methods, is quite interesting. Really, is it ARTS (the Humanities)
> or Science. If we divide this man activity into Sciences and Arts, then
> linguistics for the exception of phonetics is Arts. Can linguistics
> reconstruct some parent language? We know that all the Romance languages
> have the parent language, i.e. Latin. But can linguists reconstruct Latin on
> the basis of Italian, Spanish, French and other Romance languages? The
> answer is NO. If linguistics had been SCience, then it would have been
> possible. But it is ARTS, thus it is impossible. Or am I mistaken? Looking
> forward to hearing from you either directly yutamb at mail.ru or via the net.
> Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev
>
>
>
> Well,
>
> I do not know if there are any geneticians that ask themselves if genetics
> is science or arts... but, as far as I know, no genetician is able to
> reconstruct the genome of the ancestor of homo sapiens and chimpanzee...
>
> So I would not say anything about what is possible or impossible with
> either alternatives.
>
> And to continue with the jokes:
>
> After hearing a piece of music, Gauss reputedly asked "Nice, but what
> does it prove?" A preconception to mathematicians, of course.  But....
>
>
> Well, in itself, maybe it does not prove anything, but if you add more
> assumption to the universe you are trying to build, then you could prove
> that "Gauss was not deaf".
>
> Regards,
>
> Gilles,
>
> --
> Gilles Sérasset
> GETALP-LIG                         BP 53 - F-38041 Grenoble Cedex 9
> Phone: +33 4 76 51 43 80                   Fax:   +33 4 76 63 56 86
>
>
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>


-- 
James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, MÉXICO
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