The Problem With Grice

by JLS
for the GC

From:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28084 -- a physicist discussing physics:

"The problem is not with physics but with

human language. Our verbal idea of distance

goes back to our Neolithic ancestors for whom

the distance between


Cave A and

- - - - - - > Cave B

did NOTchange."


---- This is what Grice refers to as 'Stone-Age physics', which he, as he was writing in the twentieth-century, contrasted with "twentieth-century physics."

-- The online site continues:

"So: our language contains a fossilized

idea of distance."


----- The cave-to-cave idea, as I prefer.


The writer goes on:

"If people insist that understanding something

means being able to say it in conventional English

sentences, they will always have a hard time. English is

an Indo-European language rooted in Neolithic life."


---- What Grice calls "Stone-Age Physics", as opposed to "Twentieth-Century Physics".

The author goes on:

"I like saying things in ordinary English too! But there

are stubborn rough places in language that you have to

be aware of like this idea of distance."