One Feeds Off The Other ... or what?!

[kellychaos]

I took a discrete mathematics course with a chinese instructor who was very fluent in English with just a trace of an accent. I don't know how we arrived at the subject but we (or someone in the class) asked him if he still thought in chinese. His answer was "Yes" and that he still found the English language rather restrictive in comparison in conveying his thoughts. As mathematics is a universal language, I find it hard to believe that culture plays much of a part in what he was trying to convey in most cases. Of course, the Greeks did have a hard time with the concept of zero at first (I think that "0" was, more or less, a place holder in the Arabic number system) but I don't know if that had to do with philosophy, religion, ect.

One thing that is certain, which is pointed out in the article, is that language is not simply encoding and decoding information. There are all manner of factors including body language, inflection, intent, choice of words, tone, ect and you still won't completely convey what it is you want to say. The best that one can hope is a high percentage. The perceivers are going to place their own psychological slant on it anyway based on their life experience, culture, ect.

Every picture tells a story. Are art (architecture, painting, sculpture, ect) and music an extension of language in communication or do they transcend language in this respect? Are we to expect that those who do not excel in language comprehension do equally poorly in art/music comprehension? Is language lumped in with mathematics in the left-right brain theories? I can't remember how that is supposed to play out. I know that in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author pointed out how some could quickly break down music into its mathematical components and have an appreciation for it in that way while others would have an overall appreciation for the piece in a "the sum is greater than the sum of its parts" kind of way.