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

[Dominic Widdows]

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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