My interests include combinatorics, information theory and linguistics. I am currently a Lecturer (TT) at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Nanjing, China. This personal blog is the beginning of a discussion on syntax and semantics of both computer languages and natural languages.
The familiar saying that the exception proves the rule contains a good deal of wisdom, though from the standpoint of formal logic it became an absurdity as soon as "prove" no longer meant "put on trial." The old saying began to be profound psychology from the time it ceased to have standing in logic. What it might well suggest to us today is that, if a rule has absolutely no exceptions, it is not recognized as a rule or as anything else; it is then part of the background of experience of which we tend to remain unconscious. Never having experienced anything in contrast to it, we cannot isolate it and formulate it as a rule until we so enlarge our experience and expand our base of reference that we encounter an interruption of its regularity. The situation is somewhat analogous to that of not missing the water till the well runs dry, or not realizing that we need air till we are choking.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
No comments:
Post a Comment