Tabula Rasa

While listening to Dr. Bjornstad's lecture today, a light bulb went off in my mind. The Scientific Revolution was the gateway to the Englihtenment which gave way to...Language in Thought and Action? It's an odd connection, I know, but let me explain.

The glue that holds these events together is none other than John Locke. Lockian movements emphasize the ideal behavior of humans in general: equal rights to mankind, human nature is contrary to war-like states, etc.. These are not the ideas which I am looking to connect to Hayakawa.

Locke presented the idea of the blank slate, or tabula rasa. It expressed the notion that humans are not born with innate behavioral standards. Original sin did not exist. He believed one's character, one's blank slate, to be shaped by external environments to which one has been subjected. Like Hayakawa, Locke believed that each person's internal map varied by means of their extensional and intensional experiences.

I just found this observation to be interesting. Yes, it's simple..but I believe it to be noteworthy.

P.S. Whenever I think of "tabula rasa," all I can picture is the 12 Days of the Enlightenment video that Dr. Bjornstad showed to the class.

(Samantha Maliha)

Is everything arguable?

Just today, Mrs. Ericson was lecturing about the class notes when a statement caught my eye. It read, "Starches are insoluble in water." A day earlier, however, she had asked us to add the word "most" to the sentence, leading to the newly developed phrase, "Most starches are insoluble in water." The addition of the word triggered a bell in my memory, leading me to the thought of qualifiers used in the Toulmin Method of Argumentation.

Yes, our biology teacher has reminded us many a time to take into account the circumstances within which the information is given. (For example, crystalline ionic bonds are stronger than covalent bonds, yet the reverse is true in aqueous solutions.) Therefore, a piece of information is not necessarily and directly false when countering data is introduced. All is dependent upon the environment, specifically the semantic one. This ties in closely with our discussion of language thusfar. Due to varying intentensional and extensional worlds, along with varying affective connotations/definitions, words, statements, and scenarios may never be understood quite exactly the same more than once.

"...that no word ever has exactly the same meaning twice...since no two contexts are ever exactly the same, no two meanings can ever be exactly the same" (Hayakawa 39).

My question, however, resides more within the boundaries of the qualifiers and argumentation that is tied closely with them. "Most starches are insoluble in water," sounds an awful lot like a claim to me. Yet, how can this be? Starch is a substance easily acquired in our extensional world. It is studied just as easily with the utilization of scientific tools and research. Upon completing a set of studies, one will conclude that MOST starches are insoluble (of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, yet the speaker has acknowledged this fact).

Hayakawa states that, "Namely, when utterances have extensional meanings, discussion can be ended and agreement reached; when utterances have intensional meanings only and no extensional meanings, arguments may, and often do, go on indefinitely" (38).

I am not discussing fairies and mermaids, however. I am stating a fact about something concrete (starch) that has been studied extensively in biological fields. Why, then, does the scientific statement greatly resemble a claim?

(Samantha Maliha)