SEMANTICS ___________ Collins English Dictionary defines: semantics: the study of words. This really tells us nothing but begs many questions, the least of which is: 1) What is a study? 2) What does 'of' mean? 3) What are words? 4) What is the relationship between all the words? I have a copy of a rare book. I read it once when I worked for the Science Research Council, Holborn, London around 1967/8. It changed my life. Many years later I was able to obtain this book through bookseller's on the Internet. The book is called: Levels of Knowing and Existence by Harry L. Weinberg. It, like a great number of books is pre- ISBN. It desperately needs to be reprinted. The study is on General Semantics, which as the front cover illuminates is: 'Showing the application of semantics to the fundamental problems of philosophy, ethics and religion.' I do believe it is one of the most outstanding of any books I have read. The reason that I am saying all this is because, no matter what I read, the notions behind the writing, do not account for the notion of General Semantics. Language has always fascinated me from a very early age. Not just the fact of it but the implications of it. This must be evident to those who read my works. Any form of language, must, in some sense, qualify what it is saying. For example: 'At this time and in this place, this object I am working on is a desk'.  Later this may not be true because I am using it for some other purpose, a table for having dinner upon; inwhich is not now a desk but at another time and place becomes a 'table'. Subtle, maybe, but very important in other circumstances if you substitute 'table' for something else. I leave that 'something else' to your imagination. Language (as opposed to art, which is interpretative) must be as clear as possible to the receiver and understood, otherwise it means nothing; it is white noise. So language is also conveyed by any means possible to some-one who does not understand it by other means. That is to say, the body language (how you sit, for example), the gesture, the facial expression (denoting fear, aggression, complicity and so on), the tone of voice (harsh, strident, calm etc.) and any other means available to us given our personal abilities. Given our evolution as what we call human animals, we have developed language as our main source of communication with other human animals. Language is our prime means of communication. This language can be very subtle or very strident, depending upon the circumstances of its use. We use (silly?) language to a young child or dog or cat or whatever and the receiver of the language interprets that as something with which it is comfortable with or not comfortable with. Is talking to a plant silly? In my view, no. We do not know what effect is has until we see it and that's up to those who see it or not. Given that everything in the universe is interconnected, I see no reason to suppose this is not so. Language is merely sounds put together in certain ways that make sense to the recipient who understands them in some way. It is not a thing-on-its-own, it is, like everything else in the universe it is a whole-body thing (holistic). One can communicate with some-one who does not speak you language by other means of communication, as I said before like body language, gestures and so forth. We communicate with animals not by what we say but by how we say the words, sounds or whatever. One of the best examples of this is when disagreeing with some-one. The sounds get louder the more the argument disintegrates. The escalation can result in direct physical contact (some form of 'beating up'). However, the wary (e.g. a teacher with a pupil) learns that reducing the level of the vociferation quickly leads to the student moderating his/her voice level and at that stage, some communication can/could continue. (This could be equally true for a wise student during a severe haranging from a teacher!) British humour (especially) relies on a lot of words having a double-meaning. This is often very funny (and useful) but also leads to difficulties with others who do not share the same notions of double meanings. Apart from humour, this can also lead to discord (and is a major part of stories where the original intent of the communication is taken in an otherwise direction, the basis of so many movies/novels, for example. Translations also very badly suffer from this lack of knowledge of different languages. What is acceptable by one person from a common point of view is not the same as those from an uncommon point of view. This is why there is dissension from other groups that do not have the same translation of the words spoken (even in the 'same' language). Quick quote: (Teach Yourself German (1957) Edition from the Preface: Quote:...or the German who said in great indignation to the waiter in a London restaurant: 'I am here since ten minutes-when do I become a sausage!' He had forgotten that bekommen in English is to get, while the English become is in German werden. Endquote. Survival depends (for the human animal at least) on the understanding of language differences. Hence philosophical, ethical and religious problems. Language is both our salvation and our possible demise. It needs to be seriously considered in how we use it, along with the other accoutrements like body language, volume of speech and an understanding of what words mean in other languages we are not familiar with. One important aspect of language, which, in a sense is one of its 'faults', is that of labelling. We say such-and-such IS something. Thus we label it. However the label does not tell us what that something is. Here we have what we call a desk. The label is 'desk'. However, that explains nothing. So what is a desk? Labelling, of course leads to all sorts of communication problems and stereotyping but that could be the subject of another essay. This brings us to the levels of knowing. Anyone who has read any other of my essays will know that I keep talking about a continuum. A continuum is a constant changing, without interruption from one thing to something else, say a positive to a negative and so forth. An analogue is a continuous flow (hence the word continuum) from one infinite point to another infinite point, thus this line <__________________> (which in this case is only part of that infinity in both directions). The world is not what we call digital. Digital is very small pieces that are discreet as in this line < ---------------->. A digital signal can never become an analogue one, no matter how small the 'digit'. Neither, by the way is the universe linear. There is absolutely nothing that is perfectly straight since it has dimension in height, width, breadth and time and space. Back to levels. The level at which we observe our desk begins with the non-verbal. This is the level of our sense-field. That is, our five (and probably sixth) senses. Thus the table is one or more of these senses. The senses, of course are a continuum since we all differ in our ability to use those senses and the quality of those senses at any given time and place. We next enter another level in which we verbalise our desk. Then we must say what it is. General semantics states that whatever you say a thing IS it is not. What is a desk? Well it's a piece of wood...Ah! so it is not then a desk, it is a piece of wood and so on and so on confounding our sense of the desk with increasingly more and more complex vocabulary until we arrive at something that is patently not what we see, feel, hear, and so on. There usually isn't a problem with all this in everyday parlance. However, we should surely be mindful of it in certain situations, especially in translations from one language to another. Even within out own English language, for example, there are a myriad of other languages which we call dialects, for example. What a word means North may not be the word used South. It should also be noted that when we talk of our desk, for example, over a telephone, the desk we are seeing is not the desk the other person is seeing. Their version of the desk is the one they are looking at. The confusions of language often stem from the need for a great many people to stabilise their lives. Many people do not like, or feel uncomfortable with change. Hence entrenched ideas of all kinds. They do not change over time. This is, as I have said before not a survival mechanism. It leads to a great many ills of our time. To survive, one must change, whatever theories they hold about their universe. And like it or not, we all inhabit our own personal universe. Our 'reality' is that which our mind perceives at a certain time, in a certain place under any given circumstance. We may all agree that we live in one universe but how we perceive it is another matter entirely. In fact the notion of parallell universes, in this sense, may be perfectly correct. 'Watch how you speak', is a good epithet. Peter K. Sharpen

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