Metaphysical Implications of Language

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The concept of language involves a great deal of metaphysical implications.  What does its existence tell us about reality?  About ourselves?  About nature?

 

The fact that there are many languages, not just one, is a very profound fact, the significance of which should not be dismissed.  It is said that the ancient Greeks thought that theirs was the only language.  The word, “barbarian,” is said to have, in Greek, meant something like, “babbler.”  After all, the ancients may have wondered, how can there be more than one language?  Is not language absolute?  All else is just meaningless noise.

 

Not only are there many languages, they can take many forms.  Indeed, even within one language, it can take varied forms such as spoken, written, gestures, smoke-signals and so forth.

 

Language in general is defined as a means of communication, and more precisely, as a formal and structured means of communication.  It requires a sender, a meaning, and a receiver.  The sender intends to convey a particular meaning to the receiver.  The definition of language can be somewhat ambiguous, even though, as with art, we think we know what it is.

 

Language can express a particular thought, a specific emotion, an image, or ambiguities, such as, huh?

 

Before we get too far afield, let us narrow the topic to a more manageable scope. 

 

The concept of a transmitter, signal and receiver seems to be the core of language.  Take away any one of these, and there is no communication.

 

Both the sender and the receiver must share a language, and moreover, share everything that is involved with that language.  The sender has a thought, translates that thought into words, sends the message, which the other person receives and understands.  What had been a thought in one person’s mind, now becomes a thought in both persons’ minds.

 

The cosmos communicates.  Gravity can be considered a form of communication between two physical structures (such as earth and moon).

 

There is also a form of language involved in DNA.  It is this one which may have the most profound implications for philosophy, metaphysics and theology.

 

The comparison of DNA to a written language has been made for a long time.  It is somewhat controversial.  Even the question is in doubt, of whether DNA encodes the instructions for building an entire organism, such as the human body.  Recent research indicates that the role of DNA is much more limited than that.  It might, at most, encode only for proteins.

 

Regardless of that, it is clear that when a cell begins to divide into becoming a multicellular organism, it is following some sort of plan.  The exact nature of that plan is a mystery.  Indeed, it is one of the greatest mysteries of physics, perhaps of cosmology.  Why should a purely physical nature be able to instruct mere atoms (and molecules) to begin with a single cell, and then to make copies of itself, and then to make specialized copies of itself, and to organize all the subsequent iterations of the original cell into a coordinated system of cells that comprise one individual?

 

The principle of language, remember, incorporates a sender, a meaning, and a receiver.  If DNA is the message, the meaning—then what (or who) is the sender?  The receiver?

 

DNA, then, does not fit neatly into this model, this definition of language.  Yet, somehow, even though we cannot clearly pinpoint the sender and receiver, it becomes clear that DNA is transmitting some sort of message, a message that is understood to the degree that its instructions are followed.

 

DNA-language bears some resemblance to computer languages.

 

Computers are programmed according to languages—computer languages.  Computer languages are composed of two elements, known as ones and zeroes, or as charged and uncharged diodes.  From these ones and zeroes (known as bits), are formed multi-bit combinations known as bytes, or letters.  The bytes are combined into lines of code, or computer instructions.  When properly embedded into a computer’s electronic components, these lines of code form a sort of language, which the computer uses to carry out its functions.

 

Unlike the DNA in a cell, computers are programmed by living, conscious humans, programmers, who use the programs to carry out functions intended by the human programmers.

 

Are human cells, bodies and brains, programmed by some external force?  Is that force a blind, unknowing, uncaring nature?  Or is that force itself alive?

 

Is life an emergent phenomenon of chemistry, or is it the other way around?  Are life, consciousness and free will the motivating force, the underlying reality, of nature?

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