Biology of languaje

Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality
HUMBERTO R. MATURANA
 
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| |I am not a linguist, I am a biologist. Therefore, I shall speak about language as a biologist, and address myself to two basic | |
| |biological questions, namely: | |
| |What processes must take place inan organism for it to establish a linguistic domain with another organism? | |
| |What processes take place in a linguistic interaction that permit an organism (us) to describe and to predict events that it may | |
| |experience? | |
| |This is my way ofhonoring the memory of Eric H. Lenneberg, if one honors the memory of another scientist by speaking about one's | |
| |own work Whatever the case, I wish to honor his memory not only because of his great accomplishments, but also because he was | |
| |capable of inspiring his students, as the symposium on which this book is based revealed. The only way I can do this is to accept | |
||the honor of presenting my views about biology, language, and reality. | |
| |I shall, accordingly, speak about language as a biologist. In doing so, I | |
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| |shall use language, notwithstanding that this use of language to speak about language is within the core of the problem I wish to | |
| |consider. | |
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| |EPISTEMOLOGY | |
| |Since I am writing about language as a scientist attempting to address myself to the biological phenomena involved in its | |
| |generation and use, I shall make the following epistemologicalassumptions in order to characterize the language I shall use. | |
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| |Science | |
| |We as scientists make scientific statements.These statements are validated by the procedure we use to generate them: the | |
| |scientific method. This method can be described as involving the following operations: (a) observation of a phenomenon that, | |
| |henceforth, is taken as a problem to be explained; (b) proposition of an explanatory hypothesis in the form of a deterministic | |
| |system that can generate a...