Another Short History of Linguistics (61)

The development of language should be like the development of software. That is to say the target of development is contained more information within less symbols. For the human kind is going to have more and more knowledge. So, we have always to leave a big room for future. Once we stand on this base solidly, we can make further development. The mathematic symbols can be regard new character or words to language. For the target of language is storing or communicating meaning and knowledge and mathematic symbols not only doing this task very well but clearer and simpler. For instance, without number, you could not even tell people how sweet or salty a food is. Without number you could not express how cold and hot a weather is. Not only this, sometimes we can use mathematic symbols to express emotion too.

A Chinese has fabricated a story: When he was 50, René Descartes lived in the city of Stockholm with poverty, one day when he was drawing some math graphic on the side of road, a young girl passed by. She asked him many questions about what he was drawing and went away. Soon Descartes got an offer to be the mathematic tutor of princess of Sweden. Later he found this princess was in fact that girl he met roadside. Not too long the princess fell in love with Descartes but the king interfere this affair. He forced Descartes to leave his kingdom and forbade his daughter to see him again. Before Descartes died, he wrote 13 letters to the princess continuously, but all of them were withheld by the king. The final one had got no words but a formula r=a (1-sinθ). No one knew what it meant. When the king on his dying bed, he had shown this letter to his daughter. Seeing this the princess cried, for it was the math graphic of heart.