With Imperfect Tools: Language, Learning, and the Sharing of Knowledge in the Enlightenment Era

The triad of tasks presented this week included exploration of Enlightenment texts with three tools: the online concordance at ALEX, a digital archive, and finally Google N-Gram viewer. Rob and I selected the terms perception, learning, writing, language, and philosophy, then worked through each tool individually to independently identify patterns we noticed. During our presentation, linked here (http://prezi.com/2cnle8ntx5an/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy), we discussed surprising trends and connections between all of the words and their corresponding ideas.  Close reading through ALEX revealed the frequency, context, and location of each term, and the concordance did so for Campbell in slightly less accessible ways. Personally, I found it odd that writing did not appear more frequently considering the heavy use of language and despite the fact that both Locke and Campbell were writing; for the most part, writing was confined to an act or was used in reference to other writers. For this blog post, I’d like to focus specifically on learning and language, rather than on the set as a whole, but in doing so, I may likely refer to the other terms. With this approach, I hope to grapple with the possible relationship between the two in the context of the Enlightenment.

Language and learning appear to varying degrees across texts, with language being more frequent in both Locke and Campbell. Although neither language nor learning are linked by ALEX’s concordance, at least on the images in the presentation, they do share a common link in Locke to the word “ideas,” learning indirectly through the word knowledge, and language directly. This is not surprising considering Locke’s insistence that ideas should have names (825), that we should have the same names for the same ideas (826), and that “There is no knowledge of things conveyed by men’s words, when their ideas agree not to the reality of things” (825). Locke seems more specific about how language and learning are related based on the assigned excerpts, but Campbell directly states that one of language’s purposes is “to enlighten the understanding” (902). Near the beginning of his treatise, Locke similarly assigns language the task of verbalizing thoughts and sharing them (817). Language thus functions in some capacity, at least according to Enlightenment rhetoric, as one tool through which knowledge is conceptualized and shared. In some tangential ways, I feel like this relates to ALEX, the online archive, and the ngram: they are tools that we used as a starting point for knowledge-making of a particular set of texts and a particular set of enlightenment terms.

Much like the set of tools utilized during this week’s exploratory, however, words are imperfect tools (Locke 818). Locke warns, “Words having naturally no signification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained, by those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with others, in any language” (818). As with the passage above, this quote emphasizes a word’s connection with the external and highlights that a disconnect between word and idea undermines the sharing of knowledge. Without the connection with an idea in nature (818), something outside the human mind, then the creation of knowledge cannot be possible. Campbell’s intuitive evidence raises a different complication. He identifies three categories: mathematical axioms of the metaphysical nature (912), consciousness, which he relates to the physical (912), and finally common sense, “an original knowledge common to all mankind” (909) that is moral (912). He also notes two sources of deductive evidence: demonstrative, which comes from the relationships between ideas, and moral, which has its roots in “consciousness and common sense” and is improved by experience” (912). Truth (lowercase t) therefore exists in a complex network of external factors and internal reactions, in the points where these two interact or intersect. Words are one way this truth is shared.

Campbell discusses passions and Locke modes. Both terms in some sense uphold the same principle of there being something external that connects to a word. The most imprecise modes, according to Locke, are mixed modes, first because of their complexity, and second because of their lack of connection to things in nature (818). Passions, to Campbell, are mind-emotions (as defined during class by Michael and I) that sometimes move one to action, sometimes are inert and result in no change, and sometimes can do either (904). Through these writings and classifications, one could say that Locke and Campbell are both attempting to change perceptions of epistemology by categorizing it in new ways and building new relationships between those categories. Both men name these categories, as their predecessors did and successors have, but despite their definitions and examples, words remain imperfect vehicles for ideas. Locke’s examples of gold and liquor (822-823) demonstrate this, but the categories themselves can at times be unclear. The complexity of Locke’s mixed modes (818) and Campbell’s definition of passion could both be problematic to readers who bring different definitions of either mode or passion to a reading.

Words are the vehicles through which the orator addresses the audience, and Campbell says that one attains success in this by “excit[ing] some desire or passion in the hearers, [then]… satisfy[ing] their judgment that there is a connection between the action to which he would persuade them, and the gratification of the desire or passion which he excites” (927). Audience awareness folds into this, which implicitly requires not only an attention to passion and demeanor but also in the language being used and the way it is presented. The words, therefore, are in some ways secondary to the internal workings of the human being and their resulting external effect. However, words still serve as the vehicle through which persuasion occurs. Perhaps these treatises, while read as informative documents/theories, can in some manner be seen as persuasive. Although they are written and not spoken, the documents both present new ways of looking and understanding. Both present a learning opportunity (insofar as they detail theories) and a way to better understand how learning takes place beyond text.

One other interesting point arising from this examination is the inclusion of other languages in this consideration. Locke states that participants in a conversation must be able to “hold intelligible discourse,” but that they can do so “in any language” (818). This folds into his idea that words must be precise in order to convey knowledge, that the “common use” is “not sufficient” for “Philosophical Discourses” (819). Not just any words create philosophical truths; they must be precisely defined. But the idea of this occurring “in any language” becomes problematic when certain concepts are not necessarily translatable. Beyond the passages assigned, Campbell writes, “The translators in this, as in some other places, have been misled by a well-meant attempt to express the force of Hebraism, which in many cases cannot be expressed in our language” (382). Although words are one tool we use to share knowledge, by writing this, Campbell highlights one of the problems with translation: it is imprecise, and words in one language may not entirely capture the full concept of an idea present in another. This imperfection of words in some ways indicates the limitations of knowledge-sharing from an Enlightenment standpoint, just as a limited experience also disables a human from infinite knowledge-making. Ultimately, from an Enlightenment stance, truth exists in an external world that is in some way internalized through perception and then re-externalized through language (or perhaps even translated in some respect from an internal thought of an idea an imprecise external representation of that same idea or passion) to share knowledge. The meeting-place between both is where knowledge exists, but words are only imperfect vehicles with which a speaker shares it. Despite the uncommon usage of the word “learning” in both Locke and Campbell, both texts present an opportunity to engage in knowledge-building through the imperfect vehicle of words.

Works Cited

Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776. Ed. Lloyd Bitzer. 1963. archive.org/details/philosophyrheto03campgoog.

----. “From The Philosophy of Rhetoric.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, edited by Patricia Bizell and Bruce Herzberg, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002, pp. 902-946.

Locke, John. “From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, edited by Patricia Bizell and Bruce Herzberg, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002, pp. 817-827.