Member-only story
STUDENT:
But a concept must lie behind the word!
MEPHISTOPHELES:
All right! But one must not
be all too scrupulously concerned;
for even where concepts lack,
a word will present itself at the right time.
With words one can argue admirably,
with words one can create a system,
in words one can believe entirely,
from a word not an iota can be stolen.
— Goethe’s Faust [my translation]
The power that language gives us humans over all other known species of life is our ability to associate discrete words with ideas or concepts. We exchange words with other people (or with ourselves, often at a later time) to invoke corresponding concepts in their (or our) minds. Of course, the concepts that words invoke in other people are not always exactly the same as the concepts that we ourselves associate with those words. So our communication of ideas is approximate and prone to error.
Because this essay is intended for a general intelligent audience, I am trying to use ordinary words, ones that most people understand, to describe how we communicate and share ideas, rather than using more…
