Neils Bohr [Nobel, Physics, 1922] wrote: ‘We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words’.
A primary service of a modern university is training in the ability to build advanced models. And great math-verbal skills, the ability to take-apart and put-together using signs and symbols is the most desirable raw-material for training in advanced model-building.
As the level of intricacy and sophistication of subjects increase as in Academic Philosophy or Theoretical Science [my favorite though remains ‘Post-Modernism’] their content becomes a complex mix of abstraction and reification, an intricate cross-referencing play of sign upon sign.
Signs that refer exclusively to other signs. Thoughts that refer exclusively to other thoughts. Words defined entirely using other words. Every untied knot revealing a new knot.
Sign-world. A hall of mirrors. A closed, contained world of abstraction and analogic expression, layer upon layer, in a self-referential interweaving of sign and symbol [See Post: ‘How To Use A DIctionary’]
It can take a lifetime of observation to appreciate how much of our World is based on Language. It fits us like a snug set of contact lenses. We view the World through them. And we don’t remember that we have them on until something hits us smack in the eye.
Not-Two 