Noticed a pattern in the social sciences. The toolset of the humanities is language and the vocabulary that is available in language. However, reality is far more complex than any language can capture. So, there may be phenomena that are there but they are "invisible" because our languages do not have a word for them. A possible example are Lagrange points. We discovered this phenomenon through mathematics and physics. We have no direct experience of these points. So, if we think of a complex mathematics describing social phenomena, there may be all sorts of phenomena that these maths "show" that we may have no language vocabulary for. However, just as we have not name these points, new names will arise for these patterns.
So, can we begin to be more intentional in thinking beyond a language framework. Perhaps thinking in terms of forces at play, grouping of things, and emergence of features from those forces and groupings. And how scaling modifies the forces and characteristics of a system?
No comments:
Post a Comment