The Meaning of Plants (13)

揠苗助长，try to help the shoots grow by pulling them upward. During the time of Spring-Autumn (770－221BC) a certain farmer worried about his
seedlings of cereal crops didn’t grow up. One day he was so tired when he arrived home, he said, “I am fatigued today, as I have helped so many seedling to grow upward one by one.” Hearing this, his younger son run into their field and found all the seedlings were died. It means to say that although in the world so many people are as laze as never take care of their seedling any more, but on the other hand, someone cared about their too much. Both of them are harmful to plants.

 Pic from http://www.cztree.com/uploads/allimg/110422/1_110422112035_1.jpg

草菅人命look upon human lives as if they were grass. 贾谊 was the tutor of prince, at the time of emperor汉文帝（202—157BC）. He have said, “To be the tutor of prince, one will never teach them to do the cruel thing. As the prince of 秦始皇 was taught by 赵高 of how to cut other’s nose and kill other’s whole family. So, when this prince accession to the throne, he killed people like cut grass. Is it the fault of the prince? The root cause is from the tutor. ”

Pic from: http://fo.bl7b.com/content-25-5226-1.html

Another Short History of Linguistics (35)

In the Chinese history, there were many scholars understood that by the pictogram symbols one could not get exactly the real world or real meaning of others. They had talked too much about why language could not express the detail of clearer information. Such as：

Reference from: http://www.guoxue.com/discord/louyl/069.htm

Until someone 欧阳建 (269-300) argued that language could express human’s idea exactly. This debate in China similar the Naturalists and Conventionalists. The argument have no result but the argument itself was worthwhile. One thing I have to point out is that among these arguments, someone had talked about the Confucius had said that if language could not make things clear, than adopt the 八卦the Eight Diagrams. They called this idea as系辞.We know that the so called the Eight Diagrams is in fact a Binary number system. If we express everything by it, it could be like the idea of Thales and Pythagoras that replace language by mathematics. It tells us that the same idea could happened in various cultures the only different is if the later generation take it into account or not. It is a pity that without any pressure about expressing the ancient Chinese gave up the further study. It was not turned to be a serious knowledge instead the main stream Chinese intellectual believe that if a language could not give the detail, then people can learn the detail by sense perception. Some extremist even said that without language we can get the meaning too, or perhaps better.  They said that the true to the essence of heaven (Chinese people regard heaven as God) could not be learnt by language but by heart. When such opinion full the forum of Chinese linguistics, we will see how the unscientific techniques of expression developed.

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草木皆兵，grass & tree are regarded as soldier. In the May of 383, 苻坚 an emperor of ethnic minority lead on an army of nine hundred thousand soldiers for a battle at 淝 riverside. His army was mixed with many minorities. His enemy had only eighty thousand soldiers. Yet the enemy was the native 汉nationality. When苻坚’s vanguard of 250, thousand people lost the first battle, 苻坚 was threatened greatly. He walked on the wall of a city to have a look of his army. He found the grass and tree on the mountain aside were moved by wind, he mistook them as enemies and said, “Our enemy has so many soldiers too.” When he found it was but a mistake he felt regret, for it may cause his soldier losing moral. Later, when his troop met the enemy opposite the river of 淝，the enemy said, if you want fight, you have to make room for us to line-up. It was a taboo in the tradition Chinese military text book. But苻坚 thought, that I have ten times people than you, how can you play schemes and intrigues. Yet , when 苻坚 ordered his army withdrew, the soldier at rear thought that the battle had loosen already， for it was a huge army, they could not communicate each other and they running away directly.  苻坚 wanted to control the situation but it is too late.

百步穿杨，hit the leaf within hundred steps, 养由基 was a good archer around 600 BC. One day, he had a match with this friend in army to hit the leaf of poplar within 50 steps. 养由基 said, it is too short, let’s back to 100 steps. And then he win the champion. Yet his master, the king was unhappy with him, said, that although you are very good in archery, but I am not happy with this, for my experience tell me, a good archer will be killed by arrow. I love a soldier when he fight with enemy that he can use his mind but not skill. Later as everybody knew养由基 was good in archery, the enemy send thousand archers to fight with him and养由基 was killed by thousands of arrows.     

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Science could be either naughty fairy or goblin of humour. It always undermines any feudalism system. As the feudalism always need an expressing theory that never change, but the expression of science always tell it ‘We have to change’. For example what said in Bible was supposed never change. And when the Church of Rome explain the universe they took the theory of Aristotle that the earth was the favourite of God, so all other planets turning around earth. But the astronomical telescope forced them to change expression. Aristotle said that force is equal velocity multiplied by mass f=mv. Newton said that it is wrong, the force is equal acceleration multiplied by mass f=ma. While Einstein said, that not really, when the speed closed to the speed of light, the formula of f=ma is totally fault. We may understand that in the future say one or two hundred years later, someone will find fault of Einstein too. If any religion took anyone’s theory above, as their sutra, it will no different that they fell in a trap that waiting future generation to overthrown it. Another example is that the former Soviet Union leader Lenin had said, “Communism is equal Soviet plus electrification.”  Today, nearly all the world have realised electrification after the Soviet gone.

We have said that in China, since there had no one trying to use mathematic as a language to express the world. They thought the pictogram language was already perfect why mathematics?  With this idea, or we may say without the parallel mathematic language for comparison, the feudalism can explain everything. Their key solution of this issue was ostrich policy for no new theory challenge their status. For instance the sutra of Chinese medicine 黄帝内经was written in the time of Autumn & Spring (770-476BC). Yet until now, it is still the main reading material for the university of Chinese medicine doctor. That is to say, every diagnosis of Chinese medicine doctor is based on this book.

The ancient Chinese expressed force by the unit of weight. For instance when expressing a general 黄忠, it said that he could pull a bow of two 石. It was a unit of weight. A 石 is equal 52.8 kg. Two 石 is 105.6 kg. This expression is irrelevant with mass or speed and without these two elements, one could not introduce mathematics into language. And if a language without scientific expression, you don’t expect scientific thinking can spread in this cultural.

Einstein regard that any problem is the essential of solution, while Confuses said, “Ignoring any miracle.” 子不语怪力乱神. Besides this, today all the linguistic department of Chinese university don’t require students to know anything about mathematics. Although many western university do this either.

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投桃报李，sending peach in return get plum. It means return presents between friends or return a favour with a favour. I have said that the currently 3,000 Chinese characters could stand one million English words. It is easy to understand that in a translated writing material (book or article) the frequency of each Chinese character will appeared much higher than corresponding English word. It is easy to remember but also feel vulgar and boring. So the Chinese people sometimes don’t say a meaning directly. In most case they express the idea of ‘return a favour with a favour’ use such a term as above, especially in bribe.

Pic from: http://www.cnnewweb.com/news_show.php?cpnw_id=1161

桃李满门, peach and plum full gate. 狄仁杰 was a very honest high rank officer during the time of emperor 唐高宗. He had find criminal evidence of seventeen thousand people during one year. He had discovered heathendom and tell the truth to people. And he had cleared two thousand people’s name. People loved him but traitorous minister hate him. One day, the empress (the former emperor had died and the power fell into the hand of his wife.) asked him to introduce a minister. He introduced his son. Some jealous officers satirized him, “All the peach and plum of the world are coming from your gate.” (It means that you had a monopoly on all supplies.) But later it proved that he have chosen right person.

Pic from: http://www.suitangcity.com/uploads/allimg/140218/5-14021Q51052L9.jpg

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Albert Einstein have said: “The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.”
The impact of pictogram and alphabetic language formulated so many problems for ancient Greece that until the time of Socrates, people is still trying to solving the problem of how to express, “Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cratylus_(dialogue)

Obviously they were still carrying on the thought of Thales that is how to separate human language between true pictures of nature and imaginary of mind. The only different is that Thales was trying to use mathematics to replace language but it seemed that Socrates had never talking about mathematics. From his talking with Hippocrates, we may guess that Socrates was not good in math. This information may shake the rank of the number one philosophy in our mind. And I guess many idea of Socrates was in fact formed by Plato, for there were many things that he was hard to say and he used the mouth of Socrates to say it. 

The word ‘mathematics’ is from Greek word μάθημα（máthēma）. It had wider meanings than current meaning. The reason is that the Greek was looking for a new tool to express the world than language in order to defend the alphabetic system. Nearly all scholars involved this process voluntarily. For instance Plato tried make astronomy a branch of mathematics. Aristotle expressed moving body mathematically as F (force) is equal M (mass) multiply by V (velocity). Although it was but a mistake, but it started the study of modern mechanics as Newton found that F=MA (mass) (acceleration).

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妙笔生花，magic pen growing flower. The film “The Words” translate into Chinese is妙笔生花. The story was from a famous poet name 李白.

It was said when he was young one night he dream a flower blossomed on his brush pen. After this he always had brilliant poem.

 Pic from: http://pic.baike.soso.com/p/20090715/20090715193654-760870461.jpg

The legend said that he was the banished god of Venus. And when he was drunk, he had better poem than he was sober up.

Pic from: http://121.img.pp.sohu.com/images/blog/2007/10/7/17/6/11614b17112.jpg

Another story said that when he was a boy, he was hate school. One day, when he was playing by a riverside, he met an old woman, who was grinding an iron bar. He asked her, “Granny what are you doing there?”  The old woman said, “I am grinding a needle.”  Hearing this, he understand that doing anything must stick to it. After this he worked hard in school.

Pic from: http://www.kaiqiu.cc/home/attachment/201205/30/7787_1338345711Lq3s.jpg  

1976, International Astronomical Union named the impact craters on Mercury 16.9°N, 35.0°W with his name as Li Po.

Reference:

1. Moore, Patrick. The Data Book of Astronomy. Institute of Physics Publishing. 2000. ISBN 0-7503-0620-3.

2. Li Po. Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. NASA. [3 July 2012]. http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/3380

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Alphabetic system was invented by Phoenician people, the question is why they didn’t think about how to beaten the pictogram but left the issue to Greece?

My answer is from my linguistic law. By my linguistic law that when the Greece invented the sound of vowel, their thinking speed and memory capacity had increased. It just like a healthy strong child when he got too much energy and vigour, you could not stop him to do something. While an unhealthy and less vigour child, always appeared to be dead to all feelings.

Another example is from Japanese. Before 8 century, they didn’t have language, then they borrow characters from China, if they did the same job like Greece borrowed alphabet from Phoenician they had to have much more thinkers than China, but the fact is that in the history, the Japanese never had even one great thinker needless to say scientist. The reason is also from my linguistic law that is the original Chinese language had over one thousand species of sounds but the Japanese shift them into less than two hundred species of sounds, with any mathematical mind you may know that their thinking speed and memory capacity would drop down.    

Another example is comparing the importance of outside pressure. It is the Indian Sanskrit, it is also a sort of alphabetic language, since it developed independently, without any pressure from pictogram language, so it didn’t need to think about finding out a metaphysic expression to defending the existence. The Indian had very good mathematician as we know the story about pagoda; it said that in the middle of the world, there are three posts, one of them had 64 gold rings ranged from big to small, the Buddhism monks moving the gold rings day and night. Each time they can only move one ring, their purpose was put all the 64 rings to another post, under the condition that no bigger ring would on top of smaller on. If we move one ring from one post to another in one second, it will take 60 billion years to finish all the process.

The animation on: https://sites.google.com/site/chengzhongsu/home-1/pagoda

It would be a good mind of math to figure out such an expression but as they don’t need defend their expression system, they still don’t think about what is continuity.

So we may say the start of science had to have two condition, the first one is a promotion or development of thinking speed by increasing the number of phonetic species, the second one is pressure from pictogram. It is lucky that the Greece encountered both of them. 

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昙花一现epiphyllium flowers shortly, It means some stars or great figures only shining in history for a short time, or a flash in the pan. The epiphyllium only flowers at midnight, so someone call it queen of the night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Bb_2yqhVo has put the process in four minutes

At the beginning this story is from Lotus Sutra of Buddhist. It said that there is a flower 昙花it blossom every three thousand years. Later the Chinese used 昙花 to name this flower. We know the Buddhist started from Nepal, yet it spread into China Japan and Thailand while disappeared in Nepal. Today it affected the Chinese culture greatly. Many Chinese word or term is from Buddhist.

铁树开花the iron tree in blossom, it means something (normally good thing) that seldom seen or hardly possible.

In Chinese term the hornbeam is called iron-tree, for the trunk is as hard as iron and it need a fertilizers that with iron content. People believe it will blossom every 60 years.

In fact the hornbeam blossom every year in tropics, but in north of China, with cold weather, it rarely blossom.

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We can regard science as a language that express the universe by mathematics. Later I will explain that without the outside pressure, until now the pictogram language doesn’t develop an expression of math.

Zeno's paradoxes is still an argument about the mathematic expression of a line.

According: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes, one of the paradox is:

“In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise.”

Also it is but a mistake, but within several hundreds of years, no one can explain why there is a certain point on a line that could not be reached by mathematic expression? If the mathematics wanted to express the universe, the first thing is if it is continuous, or we may say that a divergence expression tool could not express the universe. Zeno's paradoxes was a rhetorical question about the broken point of a line. It had threaten the philosophers just because it may smashed the whole expression system of mathematics. It is lucky, later philosopher found the solution. And the most valuable thing is the argument of both side that enriched the mathematics and the born of limit theory even the born of differential calculus.

Beside the mathematic expression, for overcome the pictogram language, the linguists desperately looking for the metaphysic logic for alphabet language and ignoring the certain physics expressing. That made the language some time had only grammar without expressing, until Chomsky, we have seen so many linguists working hard on this area. They believe that once get the truth of metaphysic logic, without any rote, one can have as much vocabulary as necessary. But the funny thing is their metaphysic logic (grammar) has to be expressed physically. In this way for the last two thousand years the linguists of alphabet language ignoring how to simplify the vocabulary.

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山河破碎风飘絮；身世浮尘雨打萍：The country has broken liked willow catkin in the wind; My up and down life experience seemed the rain drop beating the duckweed.

This verse was written by the last chancellor of Song Dynasty 文天祥（6, June, 1236－9, January, 1283）.  1256, in the royal examination, he got the champion. Yet after four days, his father was dead. According Chinese tradition, father dead the son has to hold a mourning as long as three years. When he back to the public life, it was 1259, the army of Mongolia had occupied half of the land of Song Dynasty already.  文天祥use his own money to organise an army of 30,000 soldiers.  And he went to see the general伯颜 of Mongolia army for a peace talk. But during this period the coward emperor sending someone dismissed his army. When 伯颜 know this, he arrest文天祥at the negotiating table. Later someone helped him to escape successfully. At that time the emperor had surrendered already, but 文天祥 with other friends acclaimed a new emperor in other place. They had some victory but finally he was captured by the Mongolia army.  When the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai (23, Sep, 1215－18, Feb, 1294) offered him a choice; either to be the high rank officer of the new Dynasty or die. 文天祥 just wanted to die, the new emperor Kublai waited his surrender for four years, during that time, 文天祥  had tried to suicide by hunger strike but failed and He wrote the above verse.  Finally Kublai tried to persuade him surrender personally, but he refused the offer and was beheaded in 8 January 1283.

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We say the science is started from Thales. It is true. What is a scientific expression at the beginning? It could be mathematics and geometry. Both of them are abstracted from the natural world yet you could not see them from the natural world directly. For instance the basic sign of geometry is a straight line. It is an abstract line and its diameter is 0. In the natural world no one can get such line. From Thales to Chomsky all of the linguists were looking for the spiritual of expression. They think that once they got it, all the expression of human will follow a certain rule and turned to be much easier. But it is a fruitless study, for language expression like the picture expression, every signal must follow the change of certain world not a certain rule that summarized by human. For this reason, I think the rationalism started from Thales is only a de-pictogram rationalism. On the other hand, all the pictogram language seemed understand that it impossible, so pictogram accept the reality and once they accept the reality, they started to simplify their expression sound by sound, character by character and word by word. And I have summary this process into my linguistic law. While the alphabetic language was looking for unified rules of expression.

Pythagoras was the student of Thales. Thales had suggested him to study in Egypt. Why Thales had such suggestion? Because he wanted Pythagoras felt the power of pictogram and looking for solution of enriching the alphabet language of Greece. Thales had done good job. He tried to unify the expression of language by the rule of mathematics as he believe that everything could have linkages with mathematics. At his time, there was no logarithmic, no trigonometric function and no exponential function etc. there was only simple calculation of number. He didn’t know there was so many relationship among numbers, so he try to think the relationship among numbers was one followed another. For him, to create a better language the first is to prove everything link with a number, then every number has a relationship with logic, finally everything link with logic. The first step is express a straight line of geometry by number, so he declared that every point on a straight line is connected with a number. But his disciple Hippasus found there were some number are not existed rationally or we may call them as irrational number. It may ruin total doctrine of Pythagoras. If between every two rational numbers, there are countless irrational numbers, what the irrational number represent for? Since Pythagoras could not answer this question, he turned sham into anger and he send someone to kill Hippasus.  

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杏林春暖：apricot grove blossom in spring: In ancient time a very good medicine doctor 董奉lived by a mountain. He cured many people but he didn’t want them pay money. What he wanted was planting five apricot trees for seriously-ill patient and planting one apricot tree for normal patient. After few years, he got one hundred thousand apricot trees for a grove. Then he raised many animals among them. He had a store for the apricot and a notice board said that if you want exchange apricot with grain, you may do it by yourself.

But there are someone taking more apricot then his grain crookedly. In this case some wild animal such as tiger will roar at that guy. The guy will be scared and run away, some of his apricot will fall on ground, when he arrived home, and he will find what left would be exactly what he deserved. If someone dared to steal the apricot, a tiger will bite him to die. His family member will know what he did and send back what he have stolen, then the doctor will make his life back again.

All the grain he got from the apricot was relieved for the poor and needy. Later, this doctor turned to be a god. And these four characters杏林春暖 turned to be a pronoun of Chinese medicine.

橘井泉香：the fountain of well and orange taste good: an ancient person named 苏耽 had got a position to be god in heaven. When he left home he told his mother: “Mother, next year, there will be a pandemic, the orange tree and the well in our yard can cure it. If someone is ill, let him drink a litre water of the well and eat one leaf of the orange tree, it will be cured. ”

Next year everything happened according what he have said.

These two stories always make an antithetical couplet for the clinic room of a Chinese herb medicine doctor to show their medical ethics.

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But later, when the human’s mind getting complex, people remember that their ancestor have a different arrangement to classify words.

When it came the time of Aristotle, he found the different between alphabet and semantics he wanted do something better than semantics, so he invented the ontology. We have to say ontology is not semantics. Semantics is similar what the Cartel said meaning alphabet, while ontology want all words start from one substance. It is impossible. If it is possible then there would be no language issue.

Yet why Aristotle made such impossible suggestion?

The question started from earlier age philosopher Thales. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_philosophy: Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, held that all things arise from water. It is not because he gave a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him the “first man of science,” but because he gave a naturalistic explanation of the cosmos and supported it with reasons. According to tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids.

Why he intended looking for the reason of cosmos? We know, every idea happened in necessary. What is the necessary of him to think about the basic element of the universe? My explanation is from linguistics. At his time, the Greece culture is an inferior one comparing with the Egyptian and Sumerian. Both of them are pictogram. In that case, what worried about for Thales was the survival of an alphabetic language. He knew pictogram very well. And he knew that every symbol of pictogram was based from physical substance, while alphabetic language couldn’t have such relationship with the physical world. So if the alphabetic language wanted to survival, it must find out a new way to expression the world. That is metaphysics.  Or we may say that once the alphabetic language could express the world not by visual sense directly but by an abstract metaphysic world, then all the benefit of pictogram will disappeared and only in this way the alphabetic language could be survival finally. The original intention is looking for a new way for the alphabetic expression, but hit the mark by a fluke that is the beginning of science.     

Teaching Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids is but a show off. For there are so many easier way to measure the height of pyramid, why he use the shadow of sun? For the sun is the god of Egyptian, and if he can use their god to do something that may rise his social status. As for predict an eclipse, it was impossible for him with poor knowledge of the astronomy.

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岁寒三友：the three brothers in cold weather: pine, bamboo and plum are only three plants that does not fade during winter, so the Chinese people call them three brothers in cold weather, it means true brothers will stand difficulty together.

Pic from: http://pic12.nipic.com/20110128/3594300_204045630167_2.jpg

雨后春笋bamboo shot after spring shower: after spring shower, the bamboo shot are growing faster and randomly, so it means something appeared suddenly. For instance sometimes plenty buildings appeared in a certain area or sometime a certain picture are hanging in every door of a street.

Pic from: http://img2.yododo.com.cn/files/mark/photo/2009-02-17/011F8280ABE116CAFF8080811F80C09B.jpg

枯木逢春 a withered tree meet spring. It means someone or something revive again after an ordeal.