Language, what is it? We speak and sing, hear and are heard. What is this mysterious communiqué that takes place ceaselessly? All the world singing, shouting, proclaiming, revealing. The cars that pass by swish through air and roll over paved earth have their song, their languaged movement. Beethoven Piano Concertos No. 2 and No. 3 speak to me as I write, which is a kind of speaking to you as you read. We are steeped in communication, steeped in song. We are languaging, languaged, language beings---rich in song, expressing vibed intent, heard and hearing.

Language serves us as we serve it, meaningfully. Both a translation of and an expression of sense, language allows us to communicate that sense, those senses. Without the ability to sense there is no substrate for language. We have to be able to sense in order to be languaged. We have to be able to feel, to be impressed by the language that existed prior to our having been born. We felt the rhythms of our mother's body, before we were birthed out into the great wide open, as our first language. Our mother's body communicated. We felt those waves, those tides of oceanic womb, we were being communicated to, and our first communication was to kick out a leg or two, to toss and turn, to roll over, to shake, rattle and roll.

Language did not merely arise out of disembodied entities. Language has not fallen from the sky; language rose out of the Earth, as song, as heat and friction, as weltering, bubbling froth and juice slooshing up over and out of the ocean---blabbering, grunting, and groaning into post-modernity millions of years down the evoultionary thoroughfare.

First: Language is foremost of the sense-able. Language is of the sensible, of those who are able to sense. Language is of those who are able to feel the pinch, the pull, and the tug of the billions of billions that writhe in sweaty song on the backbone of interstellar spherical traveling. Language is of the able senses. Arisen from the ability to sense and make sense, meaningfully engaged, we spread word out over the kaleidoscopic expanse, rhythms echo and reverberate in unison, a rise in pitch, the harmonious application of sense.

What do you mean? Make some sense?

It's not sense-able enough for me.

What do you mean? Make some sense!

When we ask, "What does it mean?" We are saying that it must be sense-able in order for us to understand what "it" means. We must be able to sense it, or it doesn't make sense to us at all.

Language must make sense. If language doesn't make sense then it is meaningless. Being languaged is being sense-able; be-ing able to sense.

The translation of sense and in-sight into symbol and metaphor, and the expression of the same, is what we come to know as language. There is a translation of what is sensed into a symbol that most closely approximates that sense. We literally, albeit quite unconsciously, translate our many sensed experiences and insights into expressive metaphors and symbols that we have culturally agreed upon as being acceptable "signs". The signs, or signifiers, are those terms and/or symbols which most effectively serve to convey the intended meaning of what has been sensed. Sense becomes shared via signs.

"Do you feel that?" Do you have the same sense about this as I do?"

If you have also shared in what I have a sense of, then we can communicate effectively. If we have not the same sense, if it doesn't sound the same, taste the same, look the same, feel the same, then we have obstacles that block our communicating with each other in an effective and reciprocal manner. We need to be able to share in sense in order to share in meaning. If we do not share in sense, in the same or close to the same manner, then we cannot share in meaning; thus communication is effectively dead between us. Because it makes no sense.

Let's imagine that we are with someone who does not share in the same spoken language with us. How do we communicate then? No one is present to translate for us, so we don't have that. What do we do? We sense. We are in the same spacetime. So, we can share in what is sense-able, i.e., able to be sensed. We both share in the air and the earth and the sun or stars, or whatever can be sensed at that time. What we sense we can share; what we don't sense we cannot share. The language barrier that existed between us begins to be eroded as we convey what we both sense. I feel the kiss of breeze on cheek. We understand each other. You feel the warmth of sun on back of shoulders. We understand each other. The tongue discrepancy is left behind because we share in common what we are able to sense in common. We understand each other. We are both sense-able beings.

Language is our primary communication tool. Language has become both the means and the medium of sharing who and what we are, where and why we have been, how and what we will do, and when and where we may or may not go. Language is the vehicle for our experiences. Our senses travel in the form of language. Our experiences and insights travel in languaged ships set sail on the Ocean of Communions. Our lives become expressed and impressed on the Kosmos at large through language. As best as we can, we take and give to the Kosmos through various modes of communication, through langauging our senses---sense-able language.

Waves of sound travel and traverse the great wide open, reflecting off of those who are unable to make sense of the message, absorbed by those who are able to make sense of the message. We are absorbent in direct proportion to what we are able to make sense of, and reflective in direct proportion to what we are not able to make sense of. The language that soars across the expanse of me to you is impressive---it makes an impression. We are impressive beings who are also expressive becomings.

I would like to point out---at this early stage---that language, as signified here, will not be narrowly defined as just vocal utterances. Language---in the sense that the word/concept is put forth here----is any system or set of symbols and metaphors, gestures and nuances, which serves by allowing us to communicate and reciprocate in kind with the lifeworld that we are ever-presently in the midst of. Language, with this broader and more encompassing description, takes on a far richer, much deeper meaning than it is normally rendered. Language becomes more so what it actually is---any mode of expressing/impressing meaning and significance in relation to the Kosmos, in relation to All, in relation, period.

Perhaps it is now possible for us to see and understand how and why geometry itself is also a language. Mathematics---it too a language. Physics: a language; and so too poetry, biology, anatomy, psychology, music, and medicine, among others. In fact, there are multiple and quite diverse languages (or symbol sets) that we use to express/impress sense, in relation to this world, and ourselves in it.

We employ language as a tool, so as to create and to relay meaning---sense-able information. What we have a sense of is what we share through symbol and metaphor. A sense of the blues is sung by Etta James and strummed by John Lee Hooker. Monet and Cezanne paint a sense of the impressionable nature of visual perception. Einstein senses the relative nature of all observable perspectives in spacetime, and formulates a theory of relativity because of that sense.

Sense is shared and conveyed via language. A language---any language, at its best, conveys sense-ability.

So, it is apparent, then, that multiple languages not only exist, but also thrive. From music and mouthed-metaphor, to mathematics and quantified matter-signs, language abounds and thrives beyond mere utterance and gesture, before and beneath bellowing voice and booming baritone, behind and between the sing-song syllables we put to use so readily in our day to day. Language abounds.

Multiple symbol sets are written and etched, portrayed and danced into becoming, expressing what is sensed, what is felt, what is intuited, what is maybe even ineffable. Whole fields of specification and categorization, inquiry and explanation are enfolded within our knowing recognitions and unknowing mystifications. Language thrives, because communicators do. These are our intersubjective matrix fields, fields of mutually agreed upon symbols of significance, which we all use in order to relay and relate information; sense and sense-ability.

The information that we relay and relate may be emotional in nature, as we "hear/feel" in music, or it can be intellectual in nature, as we "see" in mathematics and visual arts. Language gives us a sense of where another is at---or isn't. If a language is not sensible to us then we cannot be impressed with the intent behind/beneath/between the symbols and signifiers. Language needs to make sense to be language. If a language does not make us more sense-able then it has failed us. It is not language. It is something else.

Now would be a fine time for us to begin to understand how languages are enfolded within one another. To paraphrase the poet John Donne, 'No language is an island'. Sure, langauges may indeed be quite specific---as they communicate information about a specific branch of inquiry or investigation, expression and/or comprehension---but they are not isolated in that specificity, merely diversified. For instance, the languauge that applies on the streets of New York, in the alleyways of the Burroughs may not apply in the cornfields of Iowa, but they share in being diverse manifestations of English, of a language. Aspects of a language do apply across specific domains and terrains. Therefore, languages that are specific and local are in no way isolated, though they may be specifically oriented around a locality. (Got it! Good.)

Jane Roberts, from her book The Nature of the Psyche:

In the same manner, when you ask: "Is there a master language?" it is apparent that you do not understand what language itself is. Otherwise you would know that language is dependent upon other implied ones; and that two, or all of them, are themselves and yet inseparable, so closely connected that it is impossible to separate them even though your focus may be on one language alone.

Yes, language is "so closely connected that it is impossible to separate them even though [our] focus may be on one language alone". All of our language is arising out of our experience of being here on Earth. Our experience of being here on Earth, as 'beings becoming what we will or are', is a whole; seamless; of one planet; of one locale that is diverse in its specificity as multitudes of arisings and arrestings of form in flux.

There cannot help but be similarities in language, and in understanding. The main point I would like to make at this time is that even though there are definite similarities between languages, this does not mean that we have not also sought to make certain languages into "master languages" that describe it all, that define existence in a nutshell, and make the rest nothing but superficial frosting on the master cake. The majority of these languages are of the sciences; they are deemed as being universal in applicability, so, why not also able to describe existence with complete mastery? The trick is this; that even though certain scientists would deem likely the flattening of all dimensions into a singularity that they can get a grasp of and a handle on, this does not describe everyone's experience at all. The chase for certainty has as much of an absolutist flavor as any ice cream cone you could ever want. And certainty must, by nature, be definite. And the definite is, by all intents and purposes, communicable via a language that portrays and communicates that definiteness, or that certainty.

But certain for whom? This we will explore further.

For know, let's return to the coevolution and mutual enfoldment of languages, which are always quite a lot like the environments out of which they had their birth. Rich and diverse in an ecology of forms, forces, flows, and fluxes.

If we look at geometry and mathematics---as languages in their own right---we also notice that they have co-existed and co-evolved together as languages of specification; each describing/defining a realm. Each discovery (or invention) in the field of geometry has lead to a discovery in the field of mathematics, and vice versa. Non-linear geometrics revolutionized the fields of both math and physics. It appears that any conceptual leap in the collective imagination has consequences for every field, for every language of expression/impression. Just as geometry and math have co-evolved, so too has physics and math. A new dispensation in one field is applied in another field and worked out until a convergence is reached; until coherence arises. Euclidean geometry is geometry on a plane, a two-dimensional flat surface. As long as we were working out our formulations on such a surface then all of our calculations bore out in time and there was no discrepancy. Unfortunately, we do not live in such a flat-surface world---though I would question whether or not some of us realize this yet! We live in at least four dimensions, three of those dimensions being of space and one dimension being of time (so far as we know).

In the nineteenth century when Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Reimann discovered non-Euclidean geometries it threw ol' Euclid and all of his followers on their ear. His proofs, Euclidean proofs, only applied for two dimensions, and in case you haven't looked up in awhile we live in more than two dimensions! What Non-Euclidean geometrics discovered was that if we place a triangle on a sphere, that triangle will contain more than 180 degrees, which according to Euclid is impossible (but of course the world was flat in his day, being almost 2,000 years ahead of Columbus in time). Non-Euclidean geometrics also states that parallel lines on a sphere intersect, with the best example being the lines of longitude plotted on the Earth. The lines of longitude start out parallel at the equator and then intersect at the poles. Once again, according to Eulcid this is impossible (and it is impossible in a two-dimensional world---not in three---but we have already discussed that issue).

When Reimann, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky applied Euclidean proofs in a three-dimensional world, in regards to three-dimensional forms, those Euclidean proofs fell apart. So, as a non-Eulcidean geometry was born a new mathematics was going to need to be invented as well, one that would work in relationship to non-Euclidean geometry---geometry in at least three dimensions. And this all leads us to the question of whether or not mathematics is indeed a universal language or mere fabrication? An invention? A creative application? A discovery of underlying Truth?

Prior to the time when non-Euclidean geometry was discovered, it was believed that Euclidean geometry was universally applicable (and it still may be---only in two dimensions though). It becomes crucial that we understand the context we are working within, so we that know what form of mathematics and/or geometry to apply. It is this context dependent nature of the Kosmos that Einstein formulated in his theories of relativity; which we now know are quite more than theories, as they verge on being classifiable as natural laws.

Euclidean geometry is not erroneous; it is just incomplete. Euclidean geometry works quite well on the walls of your home, or the blackboards in a classroom; and not so well in three dimensions.

Columbus discovered (for the Europeans) that the Earth was not flat, and in fact was most likely rounded, or spherical in nature. If we use the example of Euclidean geometry as not applying to spherical surfaces (three-dimensional objects), we can see that it took science about three hundred and fifty years (from about 1500 to about 1850 or so) to catch up to what Columbus' discovery gave the Europeans their first clue of. Geometry is different from when it is applied to flat surfaces than when it is applied to objects of greater depth.

Certainly we cannot always reduce one set of symbols, or a group of understandings to another. Euclidean geometry works---in two dimensions. Non-Euclidean geometry also works---now in three dimensions. We cannot reduce one to the other. They are indeed quite specific in their applications. And still they can be used to augment one another: "language is dependent upon other implied ones". One cannot reduce all of physics to math; there is a conceptual framework that we need to be able to convey that mathematics alone cannot supply for us. Mathematics, in most instances is a language of proofs, math is invented or constructed that will prove a theory that is, in most cases, intuitive to begin with. The nature of something so unscientific as a hunch (even Einstein's discoveries originated with imaginative thought experiments that were only later proved by mathematics) is later formulated in definitive terms by a mathematics that will solidify the intuitive grasp of a concept or understanding.... Of something sense-able.

Mathematics is indeed an indispensable component of physics, which one cannot do without; but in no way does it represent the all of what physics is. Else why would a physicist write a book if it all could be spoken so clearly in just the languages of mathematics?

So, math is necessary for physics, yet physics cannot be reduced to math. One language does indeed lean on another. We cannot reduce one language in whole to the other without losing an essential essence that is irreducible. Yes. Irreducible! Meaning... non-reducible, i.e., cannot be reduced to.

The above understanding is applicable to all discoveries that we make. There is an irreducible factor that we encounter; an objective wall if you will. There is a point in all reductions where this "objective wall" is encountered by the one attempting the reduction---performing the separatio. Even Einstein echoed this sentiment to his brethren: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." There is an irreducible factor in reality that cannot be determined mathematically.

 

2

The Tao-te-Ching begins with the understanding that "The Tao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name." Meanwhile, in the Western tradition we note that in the Book of John, from the New Testament of the Bible, we begin with the understanding that "In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." What gives? The "Word was God"? The "Tao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao"?

Wasn't it Rudyard Kipling who said: "East and West; never the twain shall meet."?

It is no wonder that the West has been noted for its naming---it's reductions into particularity, while the East has been noted for it's mysteriousness and exotic allure. The West believes that "In the Beginning was the Word." And it is that Western discovery chase that has been all set to uncover this Word of God, this Primordial Sound, this Lawful Essence, this Pre-Eminent Reverberation---the Sacred Hum; Theory of Everything. Beneath the material layers lies That, rests That, hides That, the Secret Sound, the Word. The Western treatise has been an uncovering affair. From psychotherapy to physics to micro biology to genetics... it is believed that beneath all the layers of artifice and illusion lies That, hidden, waiting for the righteous explorer, the hero or heroine with a thousand faces. The secrets are there. The secret is there. Beneath. Beyond. Between. Hidden. Waiting. Ever waiting. Ever there. Waiting for the right theorist, the next great discovery of the Word that is God.

Layer after layer is removed. New unknowns are exposed. It is not that. Not yet. So, the search moves on. For we will surely know the secret when we see IT, right? Yes, we will know IT when we see IT. And we haven't seen IT yet; because we are still looking, still seeking, still searching, still confounded with and by the chase, ever the chase, always the chase. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God". How do we reconcile that with "The Tao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao. The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Name."?

The same can be said of other relationships, of those between specific language groupings. There is an interdependence factor involved and a reduction fallacy that we can do without. Languages support each other, yet cannot be reduced to one another. We could look at it like the organs of our body. Our organs mutually support one another, yet cannot be reduced to one another. There is no master organ, just as there is no master language. Though some would like to make of the brain or the heart the master organ, the heart and brain have relevance only in relation to the whole being. The whole being? Yes, the whole being.

In certain sects, there is the notion that one or another of our languages can be termed universal, that this universal language can describe and determine the outcome of any and all phenomena, within or without. Of course, the irony is that devotees of various languages deem their language the pinnacle. For whatever reason---or no reason at all---humanity has a fixation predilection. So unsure, so uncertain of this experience called Life, that beneath the façade of certainty there is a killer. We will kill and oppress in the name of one or another of our absolutes---that is how unsturdy that those absolutes really are. They need defending!! This has been the case in the past, and by all indications it will continue to be the case in the times to come. (Though I must add that there are signs of acceptance in relation to relativity and subjectivity, which appear to be liberative agents as much as chaotic attractors.)

Whenever we get the 'sense' of an evolutionary wave in one language-arena, we can be sure that this wave shall, ripple-like, stretch forth to touch all other areas of specification which that language has an influence in. A single novel understanding that emerges in the form of a symbol of significance in one field ripples outward and has an influence on whole fields of land-guaging. An insight in the field of mathematics is applied in philosophy; just as insights relating to Einstein's theory of general relativity are felt and noted in literature and art, psychology and business. Evolutionary land-guage seeds are scattered about on winds of spirit and ride on the wings of song. The boundaries that would appear to exclude and cordon off insight that is translated into symbol from being related from field to field never last long. The hedgerows of specialized minds are not and never ever totally impenetrable and impregnable. Not all minds are barren. Not all fields are deserted, uninhabitable plain, craggy peak---where no seed can take root. Even the tiniest cracks and furrows in the edifices of specialization allow for the entrance of new land-guage seeds to prosper in revolutionary and unsuspecting ways. Life is subversive in that sense. Blowing where it will. Casting new seed in strange land.