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

Thu Mar 25 19:10:25 UTC 2010

One of the dangers of contrasting (for example) statistics with logic is
that this is really about comparing empiricist and rationalist methods.

This is a different question: as I've written before, every new science must
find a fertile balance between these scientific methods, and the recent
swing from "linguistics should be rationalist" to "linguistics should be
empiricist" takes us to another glass ceiling. Opinions on this get very
strong, but I haven't yet heard any opinions that aren't essentially repeats
of what Leibniz and Kant vs Locke and Hume said about science and knowledge
in general. Don't be swayed too much by the statistical advances of the past
15 years: practical advances they are, conclusions they are not, and the
philosophical tensions involved are standard not novel.

If introspection is not objective, then mathematics itself is entirely
subjective. Mathematics is traditionally taught as a purely rationalist
discipline: if you believe that the hypotenuse of an isoscelese right-angled
triangle has a length incommensurate with the shorter sides (i.e., if you
believe that there is no rational number whose square is 2), it's not
because you've measured enough such triangles with a ruler to be convinced
that future examples will behave similarly. Nobody has ever or will ever
experience a single such example. Nonetheless, any mathematician who doubts
the truth of the statement "the square root of two is irrational" would be
regarded as an idiot by other mathematicians. Is this truth unscientific
because it doesn't involve physical measurement?

Part of science is the search for causes (Aristotle is very clear on this
point at the beginning of the metaphysics, and I think to this day few would
disagree). "Knowing why" is more scientific than "knowing that". Thus,
research that says "when I used algorithm A with dataset X, I got better
results than when I used algorithm B with dataset Y" but no more is good
technology craftsmanship. Competitive numerical evaluation unfortunately
leads to a lot of technological research of this nature, but I don't believe
this activity contributes much to science. (And now I really need to duck
because I'm likely to be shot by far more many people on this list than if I
expressed dissatisfaction with rationalism as practised today.)

John's example of how "caseus formaticus" led to cheese / queso in some
languages and fromage / formaggio in others is a good example. Just knowing
the contingent mapping from language to word-used is less scientific than
understanding where the words came from.

>>From a technological point of view, I strongly suspect that without delving
into the causes behind the text, we'll never be able to incorporate some
very important linguistic factors such as the intent of the writer.

Best wishes,
Dominic

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Rainer Ottmueller
<efidetum at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Seriously:
>
> Science. But I do not feel newer mathematical theories sufficiently
> accounted for. In particular, Robust statistics not. This certainly
> holds true for other sciences as well. OTTH, I´m not amused to read
> papers on First Order Logic, again. This does not hold true for
> Biology, for instance. Even, only trivial applications of Graph theory
> are considered. In this context, I´m looking for software supporting
> Multidigraphs in Discourse analysis (for ESPs), but I fear to end up
> with yet another UML-tool.
>
> Rainer
>
>
> On 24 March 2010 16:15, Anabela Barreiro <barreiro_anabela at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Linguistics IS SCIENCE OR ART, because Linguistics IS SCIENCE AND ART.
> >> And business, and.....
> >
> >
> > As any other SCIENCE and/or ART :)
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Rainer
> >>
> >>
> >> On 24 March 2010 09:19, Gilles Serasset <Gilles.Serasset at imag.fr>
> wrote:
> >> > Dear all,
> >> >
> >> > What I meant in my earlier answer is that the classical question
> >> > "SCIENCE OR
> >> > ART" is most of the time asked only for political reasons and that it
> is
> >> > indeed non relevant in general.
> >> >
> >> > Physics, for instance, is always mentionned as the example of what one
> >> > may
> >> > call REAL science.
> >> >
> >> > And it is indeed science when one systematically uses a theory to
> >> > predict
> >> > some behaviours that are to be validated by observation. This aspect
> has
> >> > been clearly stated by P. Fung.
> >> >
> >> > But what about the way a theory is conceived ? Do you really think
> that
> >> > the
> >> > theory of relativity was the result of a "systematic pursuit of
> >> > knowledge" ?
> >> > I do believe that most of this work relies on the pursuit of an
> >> > "aesthetic"
> >> > result that would reconcile the theory and the "annoying facts".
> >> >
> >> > In this regard, there is ART and SCIENCE in physics.
> >> >
> >> > The same kind of observation holds even in mathematics when the
> >> > hypotheses
> >> > (a "beautifully" reduced set of assumption) that are admitted by a
> >> > community
> >> > are destroyed by the discovery of a new paradox. The hypothesis are a
> >> > product of ART, there failure is a product of SCIENCE.
> >> >
> >> > And I do believe that there is no way it could be another way, because
> >> > even
> >> > scientists are human and whichever definition you give to "humanity"
> it
> >> > will
> >> > not only involve the concepts of 'rigor', 'honesty', 'systematicity',
> >> > ...
> >> >
> >> > I think that whatever the way you do linguistics (by introspection or
> >> > with a
> >> > computing device or whatever), the theories, rules and principle you
> >> > "see"
> >> > in your work are the result of an artistic process. And there will be
> >> > many
> >> > other linguists that will then argue on your production and try to
> >> > invalidate them systematically (and this is science).
> >> >
> >> > Hence an irrelevant (but logically deduced from the above unscientific
> >> > assumptions) answer to the original question:
> >> >
> >> > Linguistics IS SCIENCE OR ART, because Linguistics IS SCIENCE AND ART.
> >> >
> >> > 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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