As I read through Eric Del Pozo's "Some Words on Words ..." [The Dartmouth, August 8, 1997] I couldn't help but feel proud as he intoned the emotional power of language, of the myriad complexities it presents to us. While parts of his argument are resonant, I feel that his definition of "language" comes up somewhat short. Del Pozo's statement that "Organic chemistry has never made anyone feel anything besides sleep deprivation" certainly seems a "groundless attack ... for myopic comedic value," but more importantly reflects a misunderstanding at its core -- he sings only the praises of verbal language. True, there exists a proclivity in our culture toward equating language with words, but this association, while seductive, is tenuous at best. Conversely, John Garber's well-informed response [The Dartmouth, August 12, 1997] touches on the fact that the symbols and terminology used to illuminate chemical reactions are considered universal, therefore functioning as a language in its own right. I would like to expand this notion.
I will always regard the linguistics course I took during my freshman fall as one of the most important intellectual experiences I've had in my lifetime. Never was I a stellar student of calculus; for me, a course in linguistics both satisfied the QDS requirement and kept me safely away from working with numbers. I will not pretend that I can recall now every detail I learned then about phonemes, fricatives and morphology. However, the concepts that were introduced have proven priceless to me; it was there in my not-so-comfortable chair in Rocky 1 that I was exposed to a methodology of making connections, of discovering identifiable patterns in random samples. My definition of language extends far beyond the verbal realm; rather, it consists of any distinctly patterned means of relating ideas.
Armed with this new definition, I now can grasp the patterns and reasoning in mathematics that had for so long eluded me. Chemistry and physics each have their own specialized syntax. One can hardly contest my own statement that music is a type of language, aural and written. And when you think about it, just about every discipline you can think of has some specialized means of communicating thought and making connections. On an even grander scale, one understands that all of these modes of discourse are really striving after the same goal -- greater comprehension of the human experience and the environment that nurtures it -- as the recent production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia could attest. Therefore, to pit the superiority of Goethe's contribution to posterity against that of Heisenberg, for example, is simply fruitless.
I recently finished reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Brother William and the narrator, Adso, are in search of a specific book written in Greek. Adso holds up a volume in Arabic, but William, angered, waves it away. He shouts, "Bacon was right: the scholar's first duty is to learn languages!"
Here at Dartmouth, we are privileged enough to be part of a community of diverse interests. For many, this will be the last few years of formal schooling-- take advantage of it! As you move into your junior and senior years, take a close look at your course schedule. If you spot any blank holes, I couldn't make a better recommendation to you than to start learning a new language, verbal or otherwise. Dartmouth can offer you the key to most any door you wish to open. Remember, the world is your oyster. Now go and find the pearl.
