ROBERT HEINLEIN

...on the holism of language, thought and minds doing science

 

I chanced upon this text of conversation recently (Dec 1996) and couldn't help but laugh because it was so telling in common sense, coming straight from one of us, the mind of a writer open to appreciating our "human condition".  It reminded me of all the articulate academic and philosophical discussions that occur re language, perceptions, objective/ subjective realities, the physics of experience, even my postings on several bulletin boards during June/July '96 on the folk-wisdom inherent in thought and language as elucidated by Benjamin Whorf.  In 1997 we are still pressing our analyses of consciousness and complex self organized systems - how they are all related - to new limits.   I know you'll appreciate this ...

 

 

            "I can't help but be surprised that one man should attain eminence in two such widely differing fields as psychology and mathematics. And right now I'm perfectly convinced of your ability to pass yourself off as a physicist. I don't understand it."               The smile was more amused, without being in the least patronizing, nor offensive. "Same subject," he answered.
            "Eh? How's that - "
            "Or rather, both mathematical physics and psychology are branches of the same subject, Symbology. You're a specialist; it would not necessarily come to your attention."
            "I still don't follow you."
            "No? Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea as a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely to symbols, and only negligibly to phenomenon. As a matter of fact," he continued, removing the cigarette holder from his mouth and settling into his subject, "it can be demonstrated that the human mind can only think in terms of symbols.
            "When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions -
rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of the phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic-mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not sanely.
            "In mathematical physics you are concerned with making your symbology fit physical phenomena. In psychiatry I am concerned with precisely the same thing, except that I am more immediately concerned with the man who does the thinking than with the phenomena he is thinking about. But the same subject, always the same subject."

 

Robert Heinlein, "Blowups Happen", 1939 (!)           

 

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