Does Language Plays Roles of Equally Importance in Different Areas of Knowledge?

Theory of Knowledge

Word Count : 1107

Essay 4: Does language plays roles of equally importance in different areas of knowledge?

In order to claim that we know something we must first define how we know it. There are four widely accepted ways of acquiring knowledge, through our senses and observation, through reasoning and logic, through authority and finally through intuition and revelation. However in order to acquire, produce and communicate knowledge we need the use of language.

Language, spoken or written, is our mainly means of communication. Is transmitted through learning and is a part of our culture. Only human can speak. A trait that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, and brings us together with each other. No other animal, make use of such complex means of communication. Primates like apes and monkeys make use of a natural system of communication, called “call system”, consisting of limited number of vocal sounds highly dependable on environmental stimulus. Our ancestors used to communicate with “call system” till human language evolved to what it is nowadays: a tool that allows us to discuss the past and the future, to express feelings, exchange ideas and experiences.

Language expresses the association between words and things for which they stand for. We give a name to everything we see, feel, and hear. Symbols also are integrated in human language. For example not smoking areas in restaurants are marked with a sing picturing a cigar with an “x “. But isn’t restaurants the only place that we can find symbols. Mathematics, one of the six areas of knowledge, makes use of a language that has symbols and numbers, a language complex but yet universal and in everyday use. but Mathematics does not have rules that vary from language to language or from culture to culture, is the same around the world. “Mathematics is the science of patterns, and those patterns can be found anywhere you care to look for them, in the physical universe, in the living world, or even in our own minds... mathematics serves us by making the invisible visible." (Keith Devlin, The Language of Mathematics: Making the invisible visible).We use mathematics when we buy groceries, when we ask for a receipt, when we decorate our house, when we take measures for a dress. Moreover mathematics and language is highly interrelated. According to Dr Heike Wiese author of “Maths evolved with language” “we can thank our verbal nature, along with our fingers, for the ability to develop complex number system.” Our ancestors before verbal communication they used there figures to depict quantity, this was the first expression of mathematical thinking. “Numerical cognition grew out of the symbolic cognition at the base of language”. Maths and language co – evolved.

Another area of knowledge, that language is equally important is natural sciences. Some people claims that sciences like biology, physics, chemistry, make use of specific scientific words and symbols that are understandable and useful only to those that are interesting in them. However, in the field of physics for example, terms such as elasticity, structure and acceleration are not so strange to our everyday life. These vocabulary may finds a more precise definition and use in physics but talking about elasticity we may refer to the elasticity of skin or a speeding car is a car that is accelerating and everyday phenomenon, easily understandable. Moreover language in science not only plays an active role in the development of scientific ideas – “it’s all about finding the right words” - , but is also the vehicle to communicate the ideas or the scientific findings in a comprehensible and clear way to others.

We should also examine another area of Knowledge where the role of language is equally important and this is Social Sciences. By the term Social Sciences we are referring to Economics, History, Geography, Sociology, and Psychology. Sociology deals mostly with human culture and language is one of the five components of culture along with symbols, values, beliefs and norms. For Sociology language is “the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to the next…..links us to the past and sets free the human imagination.”( John J. Machionis, “Sociology” p. 65). Also humans are rational but also emotional creatures. They act based on reason and feelings. Social / Human scientist are trying to explain the human behaviour and find common patterns ( Alchin, “Theory of Knowledge” ,

p. 158).