Another Short History of Linguistics (44)

The principle of pictogram is that every new symbol had to have a reason from visual effect, not arbitrarily. Yet no one can abstract a symbol from the picture of bull that can be distinguished from cow. So the only solution is put a gender symbol accompany with that symbol as we have talked 牡and 牝 of Chinese. This was the first emotion of semantic language. Aristotle had been study in Egypt for many years, of course he would know the structure of pictogram language. He wanted following the example of Thales to improve the Greek and he wanted to do something better than the nature linked pictogram language. He imagined the system of semantic or ontology, by the reverse deduction he thought there could be a substance and every symbol can be link with it. For the semantic language is setting one word and put a lot of word to qualify it. For instance we set a word ‘cattle’ and put male, female, young, yellow etc. to qualify it. This phenomenon made Aristotle to think that ‘cattle’ could be a qualified word of another above level. But he make a mistake, for the job of language is distinguish not summary.

Not only Aristotle, nearly all of the Greek scholar had thought this issue. For the pictogram language inventing every new symbol from the abstraction of a picture, this effect caused the alphabetic language felt astray as their new symbol of language was from arbitrary. This astray was expressed by Robert H. Robins when he narrated two controversies of ancient Greece, in his book ‘A Short History of Linguistics’. To solve this question most of the Greek philosopher paid plenty of energy. First of all the Pythagoras claimed that everything can be represent by number. We know that in human’s knowledge. Only mathematic and geometry was totally invent by human being. In the nature you will never find such concept. The Greek scholar understood that also their language didn’t have the walking stick of picture, yet they could find another walking stick that was totally man made or artificially concept that was number and Geometry. In the ‘Black Athena’ the author even believe that Greek had been colonized by Egyptian or Phoenician. No doubt, this must stimulated the Greek scholar deeply. And this stimulation caused the Greek scholar worked strenuously, as a Chinese term said, 生于忧患，死于安乐 “Thrive in calamity and perish in soft living.”

If we regard mathematic as a certain language, we have to study any gap of this expressing means. That was why the Pythagoras had visited Egypt and of course he knew the property of pictogram and that was why he claimed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality if everything really relate to math, then he could invent a new language just like many later European scholar did such as Descartes claimed the universal alphabet of meaning and Linnaean classification. Pythagoras didn’t fulfilled his wish but as he wanted to spread his mathematic rule to everything, firstly he had to study if the simplest number and the straight line are continuous, with this emotion, he first study the continuity of number, his disciple found irrational number and finally it pushed the whole scientific study of the world.