Creation of the English Language

IamJoseph writes:

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And my position is, this is not the case, that an academy was formed, and that english begat its formal construction here

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No, not really. While there were grammarians who established "rules" and one can easily find grammar books of English, it has never had a formal academy.Shakespeare was writing on the tail end of the shift from Middle English to modern English. As can be seen from the text, spelling wasn't standardized and he, personally, coined some of the most important words in modern English. The Great Vowel Shift was still in play (though winding down).The closest English has had to an academy is basically a bunch of independent grammarians insisting that they know the proper way to speak.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

IamJoseph writes:

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Involuntary reflexes cannot occur w/o a thought resulted construct underlieing it.

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Incorrect. That's the entire point in calling them involuntary.When the doctor strikes your knee with the hammer to test your reflexes, your knee twitches faster than it could take for the signal to travel to your brain and back. That's because the signal isn't processed by your brain but rather by the spine. It's called a "reflex arc." You still notice the tap and the feeling of having your leg jerk, but you detect it after it happens. Your brain doesn't get a chance to participate.

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I'm not sure if you reject the uni being finite

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This might be a good time to distinguish between "finite" and "bounded." The two are not the same.There are three things involved in a set: The elements of the set, the elements outside the set, and the boundary. Depending upon the set, the boundary may or may not be part of the set. The boundary is defined as an element such that no matter how small a delta you draw around it, there will always be elements both inside and outside the set.A "bounded" set is a set that includes its own boundary. An "unbounded" set is a set that excludes its own boundary.Take the set of numbers between 0 and 1. Are we going to include 0 and 1? If we do, then we call the set "bounded" because the boundary of the set are the points 0 and 1. This is because for 0 and 1, every subset drawn around it will contain both numbers in the set and outside the set.But, we don't have to include 0 and 1. This makes the set unbounded. Both sets are infinite, but one has a boundary and the other does not.The universe is finite but unbounded. It also has no center.

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But there is no illogic ... that a finite entity cannot contain an infinite.

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Actually, that is illogical. If a set is finite, it cannot have an infinite subset. An infinite set cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with a finite set. However, a subset of a finite set can always be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set. Therefore, it is impossible for a subset of a finite set to be infinite since we have a contradiction: Infinite sets cannot be 1-1 to finite sets yet subsets of finite sets can always be 1-1.

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The only scientific question is, how did a 'finite' universe come about.

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I suggest you look into quantum cosmology.

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You cannot expand infinity; there are no different kinds of infinity, eg small and larger ones.

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Incorrect. There is a hierarchy of infinities. Some are larger than others.The cardinality of the Reals is larger than the cardinality of the Rationals. This is easy to prove. The Rationals are denumerable. That means they can be put into 1-1 correspondance with the positive Integers.Let's construct a list of all numbers. Every number will be in its infinite repeating format. That is, rather than saying "1," we'll say "0.999...." We thus have a list:n₁ = a₁a₂a₃a₄...
n₂ = b₁b₂b₃b₄...
...Construct q such that:q_i = 2 if n_i <> 2
q_i = 3 if n_i = 2It is clear that q is not in the list of n's as it differs from every single n in at least one place.Therefore, the size of the Reals is larger than the size of the Rationals and yet both are infinite.

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You cannot add $ to an infinite number of $.

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Yes, you can. This is basic Real Analysis.Suppose you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. You're booked solid. A new guest shows up. Can you fit him in? Of course: Just have all of your guests move down one room. This leaves Room 1 open and your guest can take that room. For any finite number of guests, you just have them move that number of rooms down.You can even add an infinite number of people. Just have every guest move to the room twice as large as they are currently in: 1 moves to 2, 2 moves to 4, 3 moves to 6, etc. This leaves all the odd-numbered rooms empty (of which there are an infinite number), and you can fit them in.This, of course, assumes that the two infinities are denumerable.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Wounded King writes:

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That sounds familiar, is it something to do with Hilbert space?

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In Reimann, Hilbert, or Banach space,
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase:
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.No, Hilbert space is a complete vector space. This is simple Real Analysis. However, the use of the hotel metaphor and this version of the problem was originated by Hilbert. He extended it even further: Suppose an infinite number of coaches arrive, each with an infinite number of guests (both infinities denumerable). The hotel can still take them all: Empty the odd-numbered rooms as before and put the first coach's guests into rooms 3ⁿ (the first goes into 3, the second into 9, the third into 27, etc.) The second coach's guests go into rooms 5ⁿ (5, 25, 125, etc.) Continue with prime number bases and voila, all the guests get rooms.Drift...drift...drift....Edited by Rrhain, : Didn't point out the prime number issue.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

IamJoseph writes:

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We have no history per se pre-6000!

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Not really. While writing is somewhat young, mathematics is not. We have counting sticks as old as 30,000 years.The roots of language are quite old.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

IamJoseph responds to me:

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Not really. While writing is somewhat young, mathematics is not. We have counting sticks as old as 30,000 years.

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And that's hardly a proof of history.

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Huh? We find historical items and that isn't proof of history? That makes no sense.

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My understanding is, that language emerged prior to maths, while both these faculties are inherent in humans.

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And you're not seeing the point? If langauge preceded math and if math is at least 30,000 years old, what does that say about how old language is?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

AgamemJon writes:

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How can you lose the language war and still be up at top? How can a loser of the language war be above the winner of the language war?

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Because, and please note that I am NOT defending IaJ, counting native speakers isn't really the best way of determining which is the predominant language.Yes, by sheer number of people who speak it as a first language, Chinese outpaces all other languages, but they're all concentrated in a single place.Yes, Spanish is spoken as a primary language in more countries than English, but those countries are somewhat less populous than the ones where English is the primary language (thus the showing that English is right up there with Spanish in total number of primary speakers).If you look across the world and look at people who speak a language in any particular level, you find English surpasses Spanish. At 1.8 billion total speakers, that means about a third of all people who speak a language speak English, making it the #1 language of all.While about 400 million people speak Spanish as a primary language, only about another 100 million people speak it as a secondary language meaning that only about 500 million people who speak a language speak Spanish, making it #3.Chinese, at about 1.3 billion, is #2 but again, most of those people live in China.And with regard to science, about 95% of all science papers are written in English even though only half of the authors come from an English-speaking country. For international plane travel, you have to speak English. It's a limited form of English, but it is English.The idea of what the "dominant language" very much depends upon what you mean by that phrase. Do you mean first language? Including second language? Use in international fields? The effect of the British Empire and the US cultural dominance cannot be denied in pushing English all over the world. And while arguments could be made that Chinese is a more dominant language, the fact that the overwhelming number of them are in a single country means that you can't really compare English and Chinese.Edited by Rrhain, : Fixed some grammar problems that changed the meaning of what I was trying to say.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.