The Generosity of Artificial Languages in an Asian Perspective
This will be the second in a series of workshops on Asian contributions to the formation of modern science. The first was called "The Emergence of Artificial Languages" and took place in Leiden in 2002 under the auspices of the International Institute of Asian Studies. Its Proceedings are being published (Granoff, Staal and Yano, in press). The present workshop will address questions that are more conceptual in nature but that are studied in the same scientific and historical context.
One of these questions is alluded to by Galileo's often quoted statement, that the universe is a book written in the language of mathematics. What he had in mind was not language, but the geometrical tradition of Plato and Euclid that was also adopted by Newton. The mathematization of modern science refers to something else: artificial languages. To many of these applies what d'Alembert, the leading French mathematician of the mid-eighteenth century, wrote: "Algebra is generous; she often gives more than is asked of her." Is that declaration related to other apparently similar ideas such as Leibniz' notion, that progress in mathematics is largely due to improved notations, or Dirac's dictum that characterizes a feature of mathematical physics: "My equation is smarter than I am"?
Questions like these are sometimes assigned to the philosophy of science, a discipline that has remained more provincial than the history of science on which it might be expected to depend. Can such questions be answered in the light of some of the findings of our first workshop, e.g., that artificial languages are not confined to Europe but occur in Asia where they are used not only in mathematics (as both China and India illustrate) but also in linguistics (as established in India)? Are these mysteries that depend on wider conceptual issues such as Platonism (which is also Vedantic) or Nominalism (which is also Buddhist)? We hope to shed light on these problems not by speculation, but by taking account of information that is presently available.
Granoff, Phyllis, Frits Staal and Michio Yano, eds. (in press), The Emergence of Artificial Languages. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Asian Contributions to the Formation of Modern Science I. International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden University, September 20-21.2002. Journal of Indian Philosophy 33 (2005).
Convenors:
Frits Staal, Martin Stokhof, Wim Stokhof, Johan van Benthem, Robbert Dijkgraaf.
contact IIAS - M. Rozing
Programme
Venue:
De Balie
Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10
1017 RR Amsterdam
Thursday, 18 May 2006
10.00 Words of welcome by Wim Stokhof and Frits Staal
10.15-12.30
SESSION 1
Chairs: Kim Plofker and Martin Stokhof
1. Jens Hoyrup - University of Roskilde - Generous - sometimes too generous?
2. Jeffrey Oaks - University of Indiana - Medieval Algebra as an Artificial Language
12.45-14.15 Lunch
14.30-16.45
SESSION 2
Chairs: Kamaleswar Bhattacharya & Fenrong Liu
3. Joachim Kurtz - Emory University, Atlanta - Localizing Artificial Languages: Adaptations of European Syllogistics in Late Imperial China
4. Brendan Gillon - McGill University, Montreal en Ryukoku University, Kyoto - Panini's Astadhyayi and Linguistic Theory
Friday, 19 May 2006
10.00-12.00
SESSION 3
Chair: Dirk van Dalen
5. Frits Staal - Berkeley-Chiang Mai - Creativity and Generosity in Language
6. Roddam Narasimha - Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - OBSERVE, NUMERIZE, THEORIZE . . .Language and Epistemology in Scientific Cultures
12.15-13.45 Lunch
14.00-16.00
SESSION 4
Chair: Henk Barendregt
7. John Kadvany - Policy and Decision Science, California - Positional Notation and Linguistic Recursion
8. Martin Stokhof - University of Amsterdam - Hand or Hammer?
Saturday, 20 May 2006
10.00-12.00
SESSION 5
Chair: Jens Hoyrup
9. P.P. Divakaran - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai - Natural and Artificial in the Malayalam text of the Yuktibhasa
10. Robbert Dijkgraaf - University of Amsterdam - Can the world be captured in an equation?
12.15-13.45 Lunch
14.00-15.30
General discussion led by Bram de Swaan and Fenrong Liu
15.45-16.30
Discussion on Publication of the Proceedings