Language and Science

Alan Ford & F.David Peat

The object of this project, which represents the result of many years of discussion between us, as well as discussions with David Bohm, is to study the role of language in the description and practice of science, in its various disciplinary manifestations. A traditional view of language in science is that it plays a passive role, that it is simply the vehicle whereby meaning and information are conveyed from one speaker to another. Attempting to express a new scientific idea becomes merely a matter of "trying to find the right words". Such an attitude is an extension of the common presupposition that the essential role of language is to transport a cargo which is variously described as meaning or content. In such a light, scientific writing has, as its objective, the conveying of scientific knowledge to the reader in a clear and economical way.

The physicist will recognize this view of language as having something in common with Information Theory, in which "bits" of information are transported via a channel from transmitter to receiver. A related notion has also entered physics in the concept of a "signal", which occupies a key position in the Special Theory of Relativity. Bohm, however, has pointed out that Einstein's conception of a signal does not cohere with the corresponding "quantum" context of physics, for it implies "a certain kind of analysis which is not compatible with the sort of undivided wholeness that is implied by the quantum theory".

We call this "transport view of language" into question. The writings of Bohr and Bohm have made it clear that, in the evolution of scientific thought, language is playing a more active role than is implied by a passive vehicle which merely conveys information. In the context of communication theory, linguists themselves have also pointed to the inadequacies of this traditional viewpoint, for it is clear that the listener is as active as the speaker in elaborating the content of the message. Indeed Fauconnier has gone as far as to say that it is never possible to communicate anything that the listener doesn't in fact already know!

The idea of a mental space is most clearly understood in the case of vision in which much of what we see is built out of what we already know. Visual scanning of an exterior scene is not so much involved in conveying "bits" of information to the brain as it is a part of an active and ongoing process in which certain clues are sought for and visual hypotheses are put forward and confirmed or modified.

Some intimation of what is going on can be appreciated by looking at the drawings of an artist like Matisse, or the sketches of Rembrant. In these cases there is a considerable economy of marks upon the page, when compared with the works of many other artists, yet the final drawings are particularly satisfying. On the basis of the "information content" conveyed to the brain by these marks it would appear that such drawings are particularly impoverished. Nevertheless they arouse considerable activity within the mind, for each mark on the paper can be completed, or complemented, in a very rich way by the visual imagination of the viewer. Indeed such drawings could be said to involve a play upon the many complex visual strategies we use to fill in and complete what we see. These strategies advance hypotheses, take us in new visual directions and generate a whole dynamical feeling of space, form and movement.

We would argue that there are strong parallels to be drawn between the way in which the visual world is created and the way in which language is used to create our mental spaces. We therefore see that language can play a particularly subtle and active role in the way scientists communicate with each other and the ways in which new ideas are developed, or can be blocked. It will also be of interest to pursue the relationships between vision and language in greater depth and to investigate, for example, the role of meaning as it applies both to words in a language and to visual elements in a scene.

In the light of our proposal, that language plays an active role in the development of science, we feel that an empirical investigation of the role of language in science is called for and, at the same time, an examination of different situations in which the supposed inadequacies of language have led to "improvements" or substitutions for existing language with a view to rendering it more serviceable for the purpose of expressing scientific concepts and theories. In proposing such an investigation we welcome comments and reactions from physicists who have given thought to these issues.