Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Linguistics 447
guists, nevertheless in linguistics all necessary inferences from this compelling
premise have not yet been drawn, and, for instance, when mixing the speaker-
hearer’s standpoints, investigators get into difficulties. The possibility and
desirability of applying Bohr’s principle of complementarity to linguistics were
brought out already by his outstanding compatriot Viggo Brondal (r9), but it
still awaits systematic examination. Many more examples of common theoret-
ical and methodological problems could be named, as, for example, the con-
cepts of symmetry and antisymmetry which acquire a still more important
position in linguistics and in natural sciences, as well as questions of ‘temporal’
or ‘morphic’ determinism and of reversible fluctuations or irreversible changes
(cf. 83, pp. 527,652). Several essential points common to sciences ofcommunica-
tion and thermodynamics, particularly the ‘equivalence of negentropy and
information’ (IS), open new prospects.
The joint seminar on physics and linguistics which we conducted with Niels
Bohr over ten years ago at M.I.T. resulted in the conclusion that the contraposi-
tion of linguistics as a discipline of inferior precision to the so-called ‘exact’
sciences and, in particular, to physics is one-sided. Actually, in those sciences
‘observation is essentially an irreversible process’ (14, p. 232); information
obtained from the outer world by the physicist consists merely of one-way
‘indexes’, and in their interpretation he imposes upon the experience his own
code of ‘symbols’, an additional ‘work of imagination’ (in Brillouin’s parlance:
18, p. 21), whereas the code of verbal symbols actually exists and functions
within the speech community as an indispensable and efficient tool in the reversible
process of intercommunication. Consequently, the realistic investigator, a
factual or virtual participant in such an exchange of communication symbols,
merely translates them into a code of metalinguistic symbols and, hence, is
enabled to achieve a higher verisimilitude in the interpretation of the phenomena
observed.
Since, in the end, science is a linguistic representation of experience (70, p.
151, the interaction between the objects represented and the linguistic tools of
representation demands control of these tools as an indispensable prerequisite
for any science. This task implies an appeal for assistance to the science of
language, and linguistics, in turn, is called upon to widen the scope of its
analytic operations.*
* The author gratefully acknowledges valuablediscussions with George Beadle, Suzanne
Bourgeois, Jacob Bronowski, Jerome Bruner, Zellig Harris, Frangois Jacob, Claude
LBvi-Strauss, A. R. Luria, Andr6 Lwoff, Leslie Orgel, David McNeill, Talcott Parsons,
Karl Pribram, Jonas Salk, and Francis Schmitt, as well as the assistance of the Research
Laboratory of Electronics (M.I.T.), the Center for Cognitive Studies (Harvard), and the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, all of which have graciously furthered the research
work connected with this study, and thanks Bevin Ratner for her help in its preparation.
He is particularly obliged to Emile Benveniste and Thomas Sebeok for helpful critical
remarks on the first draft of the present paper.