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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

203 | N.J. Enfield on Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Not Scientists

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.84.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We describe the world using language — we can’t help it. And we all know that ordinary language is an imperfect way of communicating rigorous scientific statements, but sometimes it’s the best we can do. Linguist N.J. Enfield argues that the difficulties run more deeply than we might ordinarily suppose. We use language as a descriptive tool, but its origins are found in more social practices — communicating with others to express our feelings and persuade them to agree with us. As such, the very structure of language itself reflects these social purposes, and we have to be careful not to think it provides an unfiltered picture of reality.

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N.J. Enfield received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Melbourne. He is currently a professor of linguistics and Director of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre at the University of Sydney. His recent book is Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Whether it's a team reinventing the electric motorbike,

0:03.0

the sound of what this place is looks like it should be in front.

0:05.6

Or a company making a vest that allows you to feel the virtual world.

0:09.8

Right now we have wind, now it's hailing.

0:13.8

Uh-oh, now it looks like it's going to be fireballs.

0:16.8

The third angle podcast introduces you to the brilliant minds

0:20.0

behind some of the world's most unique feats of engineering.

0:23.6

I'm your host Paul Hames from PTC.

0:26.0

The third angle is out now on your favourite podcast app.

0:29.8

Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape podcast.

0:32.4

I'm your host Sean Carroll.

0:34.0

We talk about a lot of different topics here on Mindscape

0:37.2

from wine to the origin of the universe.

0:40.2

But there's one thing that they all have in common

0:43.0

that when we talk about them, we are using language to do the talking.

0:47.4

You are hearing me speak words, usually with a guest also speaking words,

0:52.8

forming sentences and so forth.

0:54.6

The structure of language is very basic to how we communicate about the world.

0:58.8

And it's also basic to how we think about the world and how we perceive it.

1:03.0

There's a famous hypothesis, the Seppier War of Hypothesis,

1:06.8

in linguistics that says that the way that we shape,

1:10.4

the way that we think about the world is only through language.

...

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