September 01, 2004
"No despicable part of their contemplation"
It seems wrong to me to assert, as Chuck Anesi does, that
"[t]he Declaration of Independence... is nothing but a trite paraphrase of the leading ideas in John Locke's
1693 Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government". But it's true that Thomas Jefferson was an avid reader of John Locke's writing, and it's too bad that Jefferson didn't use his influence to promote Locke's ideas in education as he did in politics. If you're interested in the nature and use of language, and believe that this topic has too small a role in the current curriculum at all levels, you should join me in hoping that our societies some day consider Locke's advice seriously.
I specifically mean chapter XXI of book IV of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where Locke writes that "science may be divided into three sorts." By "science" he means "all that can fall within the compass of human understanding". And his three divisions are first "the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation", which he calls physica; second "that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness", which he calls practica; and third "the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated", which he called semeiotike.
The first of these divisions corresponds more or less to what we now call the natural sciences. The second would include ethics; political science, economics and most other aspects of the social sciences; and parts of psychology. But it's the third division that I find most interesting, the division that Locke calls "the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words".
The business of this area "is to consider the nature of signs [that] the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others". This is important because "because the scene of ideas that makes one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds".
Given this, Locke observes that "[t]he consideration... of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it."
Locke uses an out-of-fashion syntactic structure in this phrase. He means "no despicable part of the contemplation of those who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it", but he gets there by connecting the relative clause "who would take..." to its head "their" across the noun "contemplation". And explaining how to construe a sentence spoils its effect, just as explaining the punch line of a joke does. As a result, it's harder than it should be to invoke the authority of Locke in support of the simple but important idea that "the consideration of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge" should form roughly a third of the curriculum at all levels.
If history had been different, I might be only be wondering why Locke chose to write "no despicable part", instead of using a more straightforward phrase such as "a large part" or "an important part". Litotes was part of his style, but I still wonder why he uses it in some cases and not in others, and what he means to imply by choosing it here. However, as things have turned out, the part of the curriculum currently allotted to the contemplation of "ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge" is indeed despicable, both in quantity and in quality, and I'd be happy enough to have that attribute negated.
Linguistics would still be an interdisciplinary field, under Locke's disciplinary taxonomy. Phonetics and parts of psycholinguistics would be physica; much of sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, language planning and so on might be practica; and the rest of course would be semeiotike. Hierarchical ontologies are rarely a very good fit to reality, even when they're devised by a hero of the enlightenment. But universities, like other human endeavors, want hierarchies regardless of their philosophical validity, and I'd be happier with Locke's version than with the ones that we inhabit now. There would presumably be core subdisciplines within semeiotike into which most linguists would fit comfortably. Certainly I feel that I would.
[Update: Trevor at kaleboel is reminded of Habermas, but concludes that "in terms of clarity, Locke has his nose in front". ]
Here's the whole of Locke's chapter:
1. Science may be divided into three sorts. All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, First, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, Secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, Thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts:-
2. Physica. First, The knowledge of things, as they are in their own proper beings, their constitution, properties, and operations; whereby I mean not only matter and body, but spirits also, which have their proper natures, constitutions, and operations, as well as bodies. This, in a little more enlarged sense of the word, I call Phusike, or natural philosophy. The end of this is bare speculative truth: and whatsoever can afford the mind of man any such, falls under this branch, whether it be God himself, angels, spirits, bodies; or any of their affections, as number, and figure, &c.
3. Practica. Secondly, Praktike, The skill of right applying our own powers and actions, for the attainment of things good and useful. The most considerable under this head is ethics, which is the seeking out those rules and measures of human actions, which lead to happiness, and the means to practise them. The end of this is not bare speculation and the knowledge of truth; but right, and a conduct suitable to it.
4. Semeiotike. Thirdly, the third branch may be called Semeiotike, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Logike, logic: the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that makes one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And perhaps if they were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with.
5. This is the first and most general division of the objects of our understanding. This seems to me the first and most general, as well as natural division of the objects of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts about nothing, but either, the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth; or about the things in his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends; or the signs the mind makes use of both in the one and the other, and the right ordering of them, for its clearer information. All which three, viz, things, as they are in themselves knowable; actions as they depend on us, in order to happiness; and the right use of signs in order to knowledge, being toto coelo different, they seemed to me to be the three great provinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another.
Posted by Mark Liberman at September 1, 2004 08:17 AM