Exponential

I remember sitting in a Linguistics course in college and learning about the creativity of language. Language is something that we constantly use to convey intentions and ideas.

“Language has a creative character: it is typically innovative without bounds, appropriate to circumstance but not caused by them – a crucial distinction – and can engender thoughts in others that they recognise they could have expressed themselves.”

—Noam Chomsky

The more people we come across and the more complex a society we build, it inevitably demands a more nuanced and developed language to engage with it. In short, language means progress. The term “Logos” has a varied meaning among philosophers and became very significant within Judaism and Christianity. Logos (the Word) became synonymous with God. God spoke and everything was created. The Word (Logos) became flesh. There are very strong associations with the divinity of language. It isn’t just Biblical, it is a defining aspect of our humanity. We passed on our knowledge through oral tradition for thousands of years before they ever developed a written language to ensure that it wasn’t forgotten. Language was protected, written language even more so. We speak and things happen as a result of our words. Most aspects of evolution within a society happens because we use language to express ideas.

I began reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch and it has furthered this thought on exponential language. Ideas, words, and thoughts are all creative acts. As ideas are shared, they interact with eachother, and much like a any mixing of elements, it creates something new. We have the ability to do this to no end. Deutsch posits something incredibly significant though. Yes, we may have the ability to constantly evolve, but evolution doesn’t necessarily mean improvement. We can go infinitely further if we use, as he calls it “good explanations” to do so. I’ve only just begun reading his book, but he is laying the groundwork for something profound. We can evolve to extinction or we can use good explanations and create new knowledge and evolve to the infinite.

I can’t say that I grasp everything he talks about in his book but it is at the very least thought provoking and definitely earth moving.