Learn to Live, Live to Love, Love to Learn, Learn to Love, Love to Live, Live to Learn

Foreword

I am bold and endeavouring enough to challenge our common sense: mine and yours, indeed. I am daring enough, indeed, to try to cast my gaze beyond and above the phenomenon of such elusive a skill as the one regarding Communication, to see what lays far under the surface we all can experience with little or no effort.
I have always been fascinated by the one characteristic feature of Formal and Linguistic Structures (namely: Languages of any kind): their power to allow people to communicate and share their thoughts and emotions with each other and, in some measure, to break the wall which separates each person's self from any other's.
Nothing would be possible without communication; without the ability and power to properly and suitably exchange ideas, we would have never been able to build our civilization, nor could we had ever attained the goal to cast our gaze far beyond the reach of our physical and spiritual body and senses. Indeed, Formal and Linguistic Structures make us what we are: a species that has evolved out of the darkness of bestiality; but, as well, those same Linguistic Structures have given has the power to understand our own suffering. Hopefully, anyway, they have given us, as well, the chance to share and shed this same suffering and get rid of it just by communicating it, to other human beings, through the one cathartic endeavour we all can experience: creativity; creativity both in the Sciences and in the Arts. There is no need to be a genius to create Science ad Art for our own enjoyment: we only need to be willing to listen to our innermost self and express it through the most suitable Language we have at our disposal. Quite surely, what we produce will neither be a seminal scientific idea nor an artistic masterpiece but, anyway, we will have tried and built our innermost being in a proper and human way. And what better goal is to be achieved than building our mind and soul to the highest standards of Humanity and Knowledge! In a way, we could even state that the search for God has to wade through our emancipation from our feral bequest: we had been created by the law of chaos to be enslaved in the condition of beasts, but the spark of reason, the very gift of chance, has given us the possibility and the means by which to fly away from bestiality and reach to the Heaven; what is, indeed, par excellence, the quest for God if not the realization (bringing off) of the freedom from bestiality? God is nothing else than reaching to the Heaven and attaining the ultimate freedom from the law that had hinged us to our material and physical needs. We can reach to God only through Love, Freedom and Knowledge.
Every human being is not worth due to her/his sex, gender, racial, ethnic, social, political or religious status; every human being is worth because she/he carries meaning. This meaning is focused on our suffering: the fact that we are able to suffer and feel our suffering is what inscribes meaning in our actions and thoughts. So, the capacity of feeling and understanding our own and others? suffering is the pivot at which human?s worthiness has to be hinged and around which our theoretic and pragmatic actions have to be carried out. And, whenever we act or think, we must bear in mind this damning, though rewarding ability; damning: because understanding suffering is suffering squared; rewarding: because understanding suffering is the only way by means of which we can become better human beings. We can figure out suffering, and its extent and scope, only through the understanding of the meaning inscribed and coded in our communications: both scientific and artistic communications or the usual every day life?s exchanging of ideas and casual small talk.
But, of course, to understand and build a communication, we need to master the Language in which such a communication is formalized and coded and out of which Structures it is conceived.
There are way many Formal and Linguistic Structures, but there is not a single comprehensive and fulfilled Theory that describes them all, unifying them through the formalization of their common elements and telling them apart through the features that make each one of them unique and properly suited to the scope and to the aim it is used for.
Certainly, I will not build a groundbreaking or seminal Theory but, surely, I will explore my mind and stake the borders beyond which I am not able to go; maybe someone else will have the gist, the wisdom and the cleverness to venture and reach beyond the limit I would have probably traced.

Introduction

My leading and inspiring interest in life is concerned with the way the human mind expresses its creativity.
I am interested both in the Arts and Sciences, and I am Learning just to be able to unify Science and Art in a holistic way. In the ancient times, Arts and Sciences were, to some degree, separeted domains, even if their respective paths run close to each other. Then, in the Middle Ages, Science and Art were organically coupled, just up until to the times of Galilei who broke the link between those two modes of the unique human expression. But, in my vew, the fracture created by Galileo is, par excellance, nothing more than a Linguistic Differentiation, being Art and Science, always, the two sides of the same medal. Through my studies and work I aim at building a sound Theory of Formal and Linguistic Structures that will be a way to understand and decode any form of expression and creativity and will provide the means by which any field of expertise, either Artistic or Scientific in nature, may be possibly studied, as far as its underlying formal and linguistic structure is concerned. I chose to name such a field of expertise TDC: Teoria Dei Codici (In English: Theory of Formal and Linguistic Structures).
I had the idea of founding such a Theory by studying Contemporary Arts, in the first place. I noticed that Contemporary Arts are inspired by and follow a way of expression that is not stiffly fettered to a rigid code or to a regular formal structure. Rather, Contemporary Arts tend to obey to a freer but still formal and structural code of expression. So, I realized that the right way to conceive and understand Contemporary Arts is not the one we used in the past, when Arts were rigidly bound to very normative formal and structural codes; the right way to look at Contemporary Arts is through a synaesthetic interpretation and decoding: a painting by Kandinsky, for instance, is not only a visual experience but also a musical journey in the most hidden realms of our minds; a Maderna's composition is not only a musical enjoyment, but, also and quite properly, a visual exploration of the mind's modes of expression. Freed from the rigid formal and normative structures that constrained the Ancient and Modern Arts, Contemporary Arts pairs with the new statistical and probabilistic Scientific Paradigms, versus the past tenets of deterministic and clockwork-operating interpretation of the Law of Nature. Maybe, it is right on the track formed by the rails of synaesthecy and statistics and probability that Art and Science are being weld back together and, this time, their merging could only be a Linguistic Assimilation. In this way, Science and Art will be once again unified.
TDC stands close to Semiotic and Semiology and complements Linguistics in that it studies the Formal Structures by means of which Signs are organized in complex formal Messages that carry structured and articulated Meaning.
In a few words, TDC generalizes, in any fields of human endeavour, the studies carried properly on by Linguistics about the natural languages.
TDC will be both a framework in which, and a method by means of which any form of human creativity will be studied and classified; the theory will also provide rigorous tools for analyzing and decoding, up to its innermost details and meaning, any message coded in any Formal and Linguistic Structure.

(0)   Knowledge

I think Knowledge to be, exactly, the formalization (in any Linguistic Structure) of the inherent analogies and relationships hidden beneath the surface accessible to either our material or our spiritual senses; particularly, in my opinion, such a Web of relations and analogies is nothing but Knowledge. Knowledge is not, precisely, a static, racking collection of unrelated odds and ends of ideas, concepts and notions; Knowledge is, exactly, the eerie and awesomely weaved Web of relationships and analogies that bridge across items that seems, at first blush, so far away and diverse as, for instance, Life and Death. No, my dearest reader, I am not venturing in a plot about those two events, life and death, that bound the human existence. I am just stating that Knowledge is our way to classify and structure both our inner and outer worlds and it is our matchless tool for detecting analogies and identities just where things seems so diverse and unrelated to each other.

(1)   Definitions

Before I could delve deep into the hidden recesses of Formal and Linguistic Structures, I need get ready and sharpen my tools. To get ready, I must first define the subject matters of my quest; I will sharpen my tools later on, once I will had been got ready and my definitions will had been compellingly and suitably laid out. This way of proceeding will help me to carry out my task and, I think, it is the best trick I have at my disposal to wade through such a difficult quagmire Formal and Linguistic Structures are.

(1.1)   The Natural Sciences

I stated above, in (0) Knowledge, that, in my opinion, Knowledge is nothing but a Web of relationships among ideas, concepts and opinions. Well, nowhere else than in the Natural Sciences could we ever get a better glimpse at such a Web. As well, I wrote: ?Knowledge is the eerie and awesomely weaved Web of relationships and analogies that bridge across items that seems, at first blush, so far away and diverse as, for instance, Life and Death.? Well, Think and Muse, for instance, of a star shining yonder high. Would had you ever guessed that in its fair gleamy light does warp the shroud of Death? Would had you ever, I ask you, had not it been for Herr Einstein? Yet, that same old star has been shining as bright to the eyes of every human being, even to mine and yours! Why, I ask you, cannot we see the bony grin of the Grim Reaper twirling in that quite star's light?
Think and Muse.
In your very own Thinking and Musing there could be a twist for a chilling Hatred, shining so warm and bright as a ray of light!
But let us now leave the path of poetry and musing to poets and dreamers and get to our compelling task to try and give a suitable (suitable to our aims) definition about the Natural Sciences. Hopefully, I will answer the questions stated above about Einstein in the course of this essay; in a way, answering those questions could even be the main goal of this essay.

(1.2)   The Human Sciences

The Human Sciences are concerned with studying topics related to each of us as individuals and as members of a society; they address such issues as political, social, economical, ethical, etc., relationships among the members of the human society, in general, and between the individual and her/his own self, in particular, and how the individual does, or would be supposed to, relate with her/his fellow human beings.

(1.3)   The Arts

Art: the craft to conceal the most sublime and beautiful as well as the most harrowing and heinous emotions in an awesome and eerie veil of beauty and harmony. In a perfect piece of Art you can feel the whole dark abyss of Emotion whirling with harrowing strife and, yet, you experience a sense of peace and liberation; you are far apart, far away: you see the most fierce bestiality cooped up and compressed by a thin, light layer of joy and peace; and you understand how easily beauty and harmony can lay sway upon ugliness and wickedness. And you have no fear, because no fierceness can reach out and get at your throat. Art is a mirror through which we can fearlessly cast our gaze in the deepest and innermost recess of our soul, and still look with detachment and awareness to our own wickedness and frailty.

(1.4)   Meaning

Having evolved into a species of higher intellectual and cognitive development, we are, to some degree, freer from our feral bequest. Now, at a higher level of civilization, we are in search for Meanings. In everything we do, there is always a quest for a meaning: we look for meanings, actually, in a book we read or in a painting we look at; we conceive a meaning out of a piece of music we listen to, we imbue meanings in our gestures and attitudes and we find and see meaning in a dance or in the expression of any other performing Arts; of course, we also find meanings in a Mathematical equation and in a Biology essay. As a matter of fact, we are no more contented simply by satisfying our material needs; so, on a more existential and spiritual level, the fruits of every Human Endeavour are just the by-products of the quest for a meaning, in every walk of life: in our work, in our musings, in our social relations, in our search for a God and in our scientific and artistic quests or enjoyment.
Of course, every meaning is influenced and, even, distorted by the way it is perceived through either our spiritual or physical senses and this same meaning is affected and tinkered with by our psychological and physical conditions. It is straightforward to understand that if a person is in a perfect homeostasis state, then its perception through her/his spiritual and physical senses are enhanced and she/he is more willing and ready to decode the meaning in a proper and suitable way, without any biases and being faithful to the message coded in any particular Linguistic Structure. On the other hand, in a state of uneasiness or illness, this some person would be more inclined in decoding the meaning not in a suitable and proper way, being her/his mind?s state not in the best conditions to carry out a properly, unbiased decoding task. Any spiritual and physical conditions that stand between those two just described states holds a characteristic sway on, and determines the way in which a particular message is decoded and interpreted by that particular person: she/he can misjudge or misinterpret the message according to her/his spiritual and physical state and the amount of the distortion is proportionally determined by that person?s mind frame and conditions, other than her/his education, social status, religion, political opinions, and so on.
However, I am neither interested in how the psychological or physical state of a person affects the way she/he decodes the meaning contained in any particular message nor in how the psychological or physical conditions of this same person influence her/his ability or willingness to draw a particular meaning out of a message coded in a characteristic Linguistic Structure, either in a biased or in a faithful way.
Here, I am properly interested in defining Meaning in its most formal and structural essence.
So: what is meaning?
Well, strictly speaking, Meaning is whatever is conveyed by a Message built out of the Formal Rules of a Formal Linguistic Structure; any linguistic structure, indeed. Such a structure is not only the one we see in natural languages such as the English or the Italian languages for that matter. Mathematics, for instance, has a linguistic structure; painting and music, or dance and sculpture, are imbued with a linguistic structure in the same way as a linguistic structure gives form to any social relationship, by means of which we interact and communicate with each other.
A mathematical equation carries meaning as well as a piece of poetry or an essay on quantum mechanics, for that matter. And to a very awesome degree, any particular formal language is characteristically and perfectly well suited for the type of meanings it has to code in its messages. Would you be able, for instance, not just to conceive but only to think about a Formal Language for expressing mathematical concepts and thoughts better suited than the actual Mathematical Language we all know? Would you be able to bring off such a task? Certainly not. Not for mathematics, you may argue, since mathematics is really abstract and definitely formalized. So leave alone maths: it is for nerds, right! And for painting? Would you be able? If not for painting, then for music or for origami, possibly?. Then, would you be able to only just think about any particular Formal Language, for coding meanings in any particular fields of endeavour, better suited than the actual Formal Language we actually use in that particular field of expertise?
The answer is: no.
Just call it Linguistic Darwinism: Formal and Linguistic Structures, just like biological organisms, properly and suitably evolve out of a well determined selection process; as far as Formal and Linguistic Structures are concerned, this very process is only guided by the characteristic needs to communicate a particular and suitable meaning that our species has, species which, on its own side, like any other, evolves under the modification pressures and the natural selection process exerted by our physical and spiritual environments.

Copyright © 2006 Francesco Barbuto

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