August
30, 2017 Wednesday
Bedtime
Story
Demonstratives or Deixis
Martin
Rees is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist, winner of several accolades
and possessing a gift for both public speaking and writing.
He
is also one of those (like me) who believe that by now, with such astonishing
technological progress thanks to the powers unleashed by scientific knowledge,
the human ape has become his own worst enemy.
Never
before in the history of this planet, and perhaps even the known universe, has
there been rendered so much power to so many members of a single species to
have a lasting effect on a ecosystem of an entire planet.
Perhaps
only bacteria and plants with chlorophyll can seek to come this close.
The
writing is beautiful of course, but the idea of writing it down for you was to
point out how interconnected all sciences is for after all knowledge is about
truth.
There
can be no better metaphor than the ouroboros to signify this.
Just
in case if you are interested to know what kind of person Martin Rees is and
how he thinks and speaks, you might like to watch this short video clip:
Let
us return once again to Tarski’s paper.
Just
as everything in the universe is connected, either intimately or remotely, for
the very same reason, this paper by Tarski “Truth and Proof” essentially on
logic involves study of linguistics.
Now
in languages there are certain words that are known as demonstratives.
In
terms of linguistics, they are known as deixis.
Deixis
are those words or phrases that can only be understood, or rather fully
understood depending on the frame of its reference or context.
Deixis
can be either of person, place or time.
For
example consider the word “here”.
Now
we all know what here means but it can be used in tremendously many ways each
time giving it a whole new interpretation.
For
instance, when I say, “please come here”, here is a deixis of both person and
place.
The
word ”here” is determined by my spatial position.
But
when I say “Here is where we will build a new hospital”, it is primarily being
used as deixis of place.
Here
my personal position is irrelevant.
Demonstratives
and deixis can be pronouns, adjectives and adverbs.
Adverbs
include words like “now”, “later”, “soon” and so on which are deixis of time have
totally different meanings depending upon the context.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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