Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

in words: if the language of philosophers is not sufficient, the multiform Library
will have produced the unprecedented language required, with its vocabularies and
grammars” (p. 55).
The fictional quest of Borges’ librarians mirrors an actual search for ancient
texts. Scholasticism was dedicated to reviving ancient wisdom. It was spawned
in the tenth century when Greek texts preserved and translated by Islamic scholars
made their way to Europe and led to the creation of European universities.
It reached its peak in the thirteenth century with Albertus Magnus’ and Thomas
Aquinas’ works on Aristotelian philosophy. A second wave of scholasticism in the
fifteenth century was fuelled by new discoveries of ancient texts (Debus, 1978). “The
search for new classical texts was intense in the fifteenth century, and each new
discovery was hailed as a major achievement” (Debus, 1978, p. 4). These discoveries
included Ptolemy’s Geography and the only copy of Lucretius’ De rerum natura,
which later revived interest in atomism.
Borges’ (1962) emphasis on language is also mirrored in the scholastic search
for the wisdom of the ancients. The continued discovery of ancient texts led to the
Greek revival in the fifteenth century (Debus, 1978), which enabled this treasure
trove of texts to be translated into Latin. In the development of modern science,
Borges’ “unprecedented language” was first Greek and then Latin.
The departure from Latin as the language of science was a turbulent development
during the scientific revolution. Paracelsus was attacked by the medical
establishment for presenting medical lectures in his native Swiss German in 1527
(Debus, 1978). Galileo published his 1612 Discourse on Bodies in Water in Italian, an
act that enraged his fellow philosophers of the Florentine Academy (Sobel, 1999).
For a long period, scholars who wrote in their vernacular tongue had to preface
their writings with apologies and explanations of why this did not represent a challenge
to the universities of the day (Debus, 1978).
Galileo wrote in Italian because “I must have everyone able to read it”
(Sobel, 1999, p. 47). However, from some perspectives, writing in the vernacular
actually produced a communication breakdown, because Galileo was not disseminating
knowledge in the scholarly lingua franca, Latin. Galileo’s writings were
examined as part of his trial. It was concluded that “he writes in Italian, certainly
not to extend the hand to foreigners or other learned men” (Sobel, 1999, p. 256).
A different sort of communication breakdown is a common theme in modern
philosophy of science. It has been argued that some scientific theories are incommensurable
with others (Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970). Incommensurable scientific
theories are theories that are impossible to compare because there is no logical
or meaningful relation between some or all of the theories’ terms. Kuhn argued
that this situation would occur if, within a science, different researchers operated
under different paradigms. “Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and
14 Chapter 1