Terminology

“ Linnaeus distinctly declared that this was his view, and his school in Germany and England adhered to it so firmly that it established itself with the general public, who to the present day consider it as a self-evident proposition that a botanist exists essentially for the purpose of at once designating any and every plant by a name. Like his predecessors, Linnaeus regarded morphology and general theoretical botany only as means to be used for discovering the principles of terminology and definition, with a view to the improvement of the art of describing plants. ”

“ The power of the human will to make something into a sign here appears in its elementary (socially effective) form. The convention again about the special meaning of words, even of otherwise meaningless words, plays an important part in the social life. ”

“ Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, an induction from particulars to a general concept. ”

“ Description Defined.+—By means of our senses we gain a knowledge of the world. We see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; and the ideas so acquired are the fundamental elements of our knowledge, without which thinking would be impossible. It, therefore, happens that much of the language that we use has for its purpose the transmission to others of such ideas. Such writing is called description. We may, therefore, define description as that form of discourse which has for its purpose the formation of an image. ”

“ A Description, I conceive, can only be ranked among Definitions, when taken (as in the case of the zoological definition of man) to fulfill the true office of a Definition, by declaring the connotation given to a word in some special use, as a term of science or art: which special connotation of course would not be expressed by the proper definition of the word in its ordinary employment. ”

“ Every general name, if used as a concrete term, has, or may have, a corresponding abstract term. Sometimes the concrete term is modified to form the abstract, as 'greedy—greediness'; sometimes a word is adapted from another language, as 'man—humanity'; sometimes a composite term is used, as 'mercury—the nature of mercury,' etc. The same concrete may have several abstract correlatives, as 'man—manhood, humanity, human nature' ”

“ Likewise we may explain the meaning of a general term by enumerating its attributes. To illustrate: power of speech, rationality, ability to laugh, etc., explain the meaning of the general term man. The explanation of the singular term fits only Fido. There is probably no other dog in the world just like Fido. But the explanation of the general term man may be applied to all men.
A brief enumeration of attributes which may be applied to a class of things often takes the form of a definition. The word definition comes from the word definire, meaning to limit or fix the bounds of. ”

“ What scholarship has agreed upon as the meaning of a word, that must be its meaning for us. Words come and words go, and change with the passing of time. We must seek, then, the sense of the word as used at the time of the work or writer studied. We must, further, determine the classification of the document concerned, whether technical, scientific, or literature for art's sake. ”

“ We express in language, by means of verbs, adjectives, and equivalent expressions, what, as to their qualities, things are, what they do, and in what relation they stand. But in addition to such expressions, by which we qualify, describe, compare, and distinguish the various objects that we observe and think about, we have certain other expressions by means of which we assert that given objects are, or are real, rather than are not, or are unreal. Now, in technical phrase, we shall hereafter call the expressions of the latter type the ontological vocabulary of our language. ”

“ These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. ”

“ The history of a word, by showing the causes which determine its use, is in these cases a better guide to its employment than any definition; for definitions can only show its meaning at the particular time, or at most the series of its successive meanings, but its history may show the law by which the succession was produced. The word gentleman, for instance, to the correct employment of which a dictionary would be no guide, originally meant simply a man born in a certain rank. ”

“ As our thoughts or reflections are conducted by language, great caution is required that the terms we employ should possess a fixed and determinate meaning; and this is more especially important, when we employ words which are not the representatives of the objects of our perceptions, but of a complex nature, or, as they have been denominated, general terms; such as those which are used to designate the faculties and operations of the mind, and such as convey our moral attributes. ”

“ For, as we define a concrete name by enumerating the attributes which it connotes, and as the attributes connoted by a concrete name form the entire signification of the corresponding abstract name, the same enumeration will serve for the definition of both. Thus, if the definition of a human being be this, “a being, corporeal, animated, rational, shaped so and so,” the definition of humanity will be corporeity and animal life, combined with rationality, and with such and such a shape. ”

“ His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously accompanied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compressed regularity and official splendour of a procession. ”

“ Concrete Terms; General vs. Specific Terms>
Abstract terms convey ideas; concrete terms call up pictures. If we say "Honesty is the best policy," we speak abstractly. Nobody can see or hear or touch the thing honesty or the thing policy; the apprehension of them must be purely intellectual. But if we say "The rat began to gnaw the rope," we speak concretely. Rat, gnaw, and rope are tangible, perceptible things; the words bring to us visions of particular objects and actions. ”

“ Let me, for the purposes of this discussion, make a triple division of knowledge into physical, ethical, and æsthetical, according as our thought is concerned with the world of matter, the world of mind, and the world of art or beauty. ”

“ It is manifest that the sum of human knowledge in all its departments and ramifications can be arranged in a variety of ways, and that all kinds of methods of classification can be devised to suit the basis selected, be it supernatural, physical, ethnological, philosophical, historical or other. ”

“ Amongst the numerous and diversified objects of human investigation and research, it would, perhaps, be difficult to single out one, more curious and interesting, than that of the medium which bears the symbols of language ”

“ Verbs of choosing, calling, naming, making, and thinking may take two objects referring to the same person or thing.
The first of these is the direct object, and the second, which completes the sense of the predicate, is called a predicate objective.
We chose Oscar president. [Oscar is the direct object of chose; president is the predicate objective.] I call John my friend. They thought the man a coward. Make my house your home. The predicate objective is often called the complementary object or the objective attribute. It is classed as a complement. ”

“ Hence, we may broadly distinguish between concepts as of two orders—namely, those which have to do with recepts, and those which have to do with other concepts. For a concept is a concept even though it be nothing more than a named recept; and it is still a concept, even though it stands for the highest generalization of thought. I will make this distinction yet more clear by means of better illustrations. ”

“ These lessons are of the highest value with regard to all employments of the human mind; for the mode in which words in common use acquire their meaning, approaches far more nearly to the Method of 177 Type than to the method of definition. The terms which belong to our practical concerns, or to our spontaneous and unscientific speculations, are rarely capable of exact definition. ”

“ To express one’s thoughts correctly and with refinement requires absolute obedience to the common conventions of good literature.
The study of composition includes, first, the careful selection of materials and their effective arrangement; and second, a knowledge of the established conventions of literature: of spelling; of the common uses of the marks of punctuation,—period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, semicolon, comma; of the common idioms of our language; and of the elements of its grammar. ”

“ Hardly a term that we employ is not partially ambiguous, covering, not a point, but a somewhat extended and irregular territory of significance; so that, in understanding what is said to us, we have to select, under the guidance of the context, or general requirement of the sense, the particular meaning intended. ”

“ Of course, there must be a great diversity in the degrees of emphasis, from the slight to the vehement; but the general divisions which we have suggested will be quite sufficient for practical purposes—and we have no other in view.
“Though in all properly constructed sentences, every word is useful and necessary, yet in every sentence the relative importance of the words must be different. Articles, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Auxiliary Verbs, for example, are less important in their significations than the words which they introduce or connect—as Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs. ”

“ If you call the object of knowledge 'reality,' and call the manner of its being cognized 'truth,' cognized moreover on particular occasions, and variously, by particular human beings who have their various businesses with it, and if you hold consistently to this nomenclature, it seems to me that you escape all sorts of trouble. ”

“ In each of the preceding exercises compare your vocabulary with that of the original as to size, precision, and the grace and ease with which words are put together. Does the original employ terms unfamiliar to you? If so, look up their meaning and make them yours; then observe, when you next paraphrase the passage, whether your mastery of these terms has improved your expression.
<3. Mastery through Discourse at First Hand>
Models have their use, but you can also work without models. It is imperative that you should. ”

“ But the abstract term, 'humanity,' denotes the very collection of attributes, which was before connoted by the concrete terms, 'man' and 'human.' In this case, therefore, extension and intension coincide, and the term is non-connotative. ”

“ If the first broad outline of classification is made clear and simple, expressed in ordinary English words used in their natural sense, study and experience will presently show the worker the need for a fuller nomenclature, and he will welcome the technical words—life-casket, husk-myth, cumulative tale, and so forth—as he becomes acquainted with the ideas or the things they have been formed to describe. ”

“ There remaineth the fourth kind of rational knowledge, which is transitive, concerning the expressing or transferring our knowledge to others, which I will term by the general name of tradition or delivery. ”

“ We now arrive at some of the most senseless and absurd jargon, that ever affected sensibility reduced to language—if that may be called language, which inverts its purpose, and confounds, instead of assisting, the understanding. ”

“ I hold my peace on the topic of grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometers, logicians, musicians, astronomers, astrologers, physicians, whose science is sufficient, or very profitable, to mortal men, and is divided in 3 parts as in doctrine, and in reason, and use. ”

“ In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which are involved in its signification. ”

“ Hence the study of the categories, which is for Logic a classification of our widest concepts, become for Metaphysics an inquiry into the modes which characterize real being.215 By determining what these modes are, by studying their characteristics, by tracing them through the data of experience, we advance in our knowledge of reality. ”

“ There are four ways and four ways only of furnishing a student with the meaning of given foreign units:
(1) By immediate association, as when we point to the object or a picture of the object designated by a noun or pronoun, when we perform the action designated by a verb, when we point to a real example of the quality designated by an adjective, or when we demonstrate in similar ways that which is designated by a preposition of place or certain categories of adverbs. ”

“ The speaker ought to embrace in his view many particular cases, to gather together what is common to all, and to combine them into one generic concept, which is to be embodied in words as the definition. ”

“ When the etymology is thus adjusted, the Analogy of our language is next to be considered; when we have discovered whence our words are derived, we are to examine by what rules they are governed, and how they are inflected through their various terminations. ”