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> My definition of language from 1974/75:
>
> > That would be a perfectly good characterization (not definition) of
> > communication (semiotic system). But not of language.
>
> Langue may use a semitotic system, as the human body
> needs a skeleeton, But language is more than a semiotic
> system, as you are more than a skeleton.
>
> If language is a car, communication is the traffic. You
> can't define language by means of communication.
> As you can't define life by means of living beings.
> What is life? plants, animals, human beings ... This
> wouldn't do.. Eric J. Chaisson enumerates a couple
> of definitions of life in his book Cosmic Evolution.
> Let me try a new one, based on my above definition
> of language:
>
> Life may be an organization of matter far from
> thermodynamical equilibrium (so-called dissipative
> structures) that relies on language.
>
> Not all of matter can turn into living matter. This leads
> to life in boundaries, single entities of life which maintain
> contact via exchange initiated by language (language
> understood in the broadest sense of my definition).
> All living beings together weigh some 10 exp 18 grams,
> while the mass of the planet Earth is nearly 6 times
> 10 exp 27 grams. This means that 1 / 6,000,000,000
> of the Earth turned into living matter. Or, the other
> way round: one part of living matter weaves a web
> of life around six (French and American) billion parts
> of non-living matter, and this web of life is maintained
> by language in the broadest sense.
>
> (To be further developed)
This seems a lucky idea to me. I remember that Claude
Lévi Strauss equated language with exchange. A very
fashionable idea in the 1960s and 70s, before Chomsky
took over. (The same idea can be top-notch in one time
and kooky fourty years later. Consider this. Mainstream
linguistics today may be kooky in 2050 ...) I see the
value of Strauss's idea, and would make it more precise
from my point of view: language initiates and accompanies
exchange. Life requires exchange. Cellls in a living tissue
exchange electrons, photons, and molecules. I trace
language down to the level of genes. What do genes
exchange? perhaps entangled electrons and photons?
may it be that life does not only emerge on the level
of biochemistry but is rooted in quantum physics?
(To be further developed)
Franz Gnaedinger (reconvalescent)
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