Humanities desk
< May 15	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 17 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 16[edit]

Yeong Mui Cha[edit]

I am trying to find out where these sources are referring to as "Yeong Mui Cha"? What is the modern transliteration and the Chinese characters for the village? I am aware it is in Heungshan aka Zhongshan just not what the modern spelling should be. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 02:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese wikipedia says that Chun Afong is from 黄茅斜 (Huangmao Xie), which doesn't quite jive with Yeong Mui Cha, but other sources identify the village as 楊梅斜, which would correspond to Yeong Mui Cha, so I suspect the latter is what you are looking for. In pinyin that should be Yangmei Xie. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This forum post says Huangmao Xie was also known as Yangmei Xie and was also known as Meixi - the last is now the official name. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:40, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much. Is there any more reliable book source that I can use for an article on Chun Afong. I can't read Chinese characters, but it can be a Chinese book that says that if possible.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:22, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a source that directly confirms that Chun Afong was born in the village and all three names. It has an English title, but the relevant text is in Chinese.

[1]: author: Lin Tien-Wai; title: Collected Essays on Local History of the Asian-Pacific Region: Contribution of Overseas Chinese; publisher: Hong Kong University Press; year: 1991; ISBN: X03782689096; page ref: 321. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 15:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is the Linguistic Turn opposed to using mathematics and formal methods in explaining some aspects of reality?[edit]

One of the most notable tenets of the Linguistic Turn is that language constitutes reality. One must, therefore, pay close attention to language and the way it is used to address or settle philosophical problems. Can this position be equated with the notion that mathematics and formal methods should and cannot not be used to understand some aspects of reality?Rjarja2015 (talk) 12:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Convenience link for those (like me) who had never heard of the Linguistic turn. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.60.183 (talk) 13:01, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, no. First, the Linguistic turn is not a unified movement with a clear opinion, but rather a phenomenon where multiple philosophers noted that language defines reality (or rather our perception and description of reality). Plato assumed there was an ideal chair - the form of the chair, representing "chairness". But that leads to a problem - if we make a chair wider and wider and wider, when does it stop being a chair and starts being a bench? Is there a "chanch" in between? Or a "beir"? The philosophers of the linguistic turn noted that "chair" is not a natural thing, but a linguistic category, and that thus our perception of reality (or "perceived reality") depends on language. See also Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. But that does not mean that you cannot do formal reason within the linguistically defined concepts. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistic turn is a form of Solipsism, which may lead the OP down some interesting rabbit holes. --Jayron 32 16:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question about mathematics seems reminiscent of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Although the connection with linguistic turn seems a little tenuous. older ≠ wiser 16:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd say its simpler than that: Linguistic turn, as a philosophy, would also treat mathematics as a linguistic system (which it is) and as such, to be no different from other forms of language. --Jayron 32 16:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

True enough, but as Stephan pointed out, linguistic turn is not a unified movement with a clear opinion. I'd be surprised if Gödel was not influenced by contemporaneous developments, but tracing the pedigree is beyond me. older ≠ wiser 16:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Godel's work is foundational in Metamathematics, which was part of the greater general trend, in the early-to-mid 20th century, in turning to understanding thought systems in themselves, compare to studies like historiography (as distinct from History), the philosophy of science (as distinct from science), etc. These sorts of "meta-disciplines" were all the rage during Godel's time and his work is more due to that sort of thinking probably as anything else. --Jayron 32 16:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Popular accounts of the Gödel theorems have an awful lot of "woo" or mystification. They are very precise mathematical results, and understanding those results at a mathematical level (even if not in painful detail) should be a pre-requisite to trying to figure out where they fit in to philosophical movements. The interested student should learn what first-order logic is, what a formal proof is, and how these things relate to the "real mathematics" that mathematicians actually do (even if just on the natural numbers). Then learn what the theorems actually state, and how they complicate any effort to reduce "real mathematics" to just formal proof in fixed systems.

The spoiler is that the theorems refute certain very naive versions of formalism and logicism. There are more sophisticated versions of those schools that survive, but the theorems make the accounts more difficult.

On the other hand, the theorems have essentially no effect on mathematical realism (so-called Platonism). They don't make a realist account any harder, but they also don't address any of the problems with it. Possibly they make realism more attractive by comparison, but by adding difficulties to its main competitors, not by subtracting any from realism itself.

You run into an awful lot of educated people who somehow get this story exactly backwards, and think that the theorems somehow refute realism. That's not true at all; if anything they go in the other direction. Gödel himself was a realist, at least in his latter days. --Trovatore (talk) 05:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The linguistic turn is often related to the work of Roman Jakobson and the Vienna Circle. Formal logic would be a point of contact between that movement and modern mathematics. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is no math which cannot be expressed in words, equations (8^2=4^3) are simply more economical ways of saying that eight eights equal four sets of four fours. Graphs are wondrous, but they are not inexpressible as written expressions. μηδείς (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's like saying a newspaper report of a fire is the fire. Dmcq (talk) 09:05, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say that at all, nor do I believe it; language is not a simulation of math. You don't even refute, you just mock a straw man. I simply said that any mathematical expression can be expressed (if not necessarily easily) in words, and you are quite free to give a counter-example. But I can just imagine someone telling a blind person, "Sorry, you can't learn division because there's no way to express ÷ in words.

You said "There is no math which cannot be expressed in words". You seem to think that maths is symbols and equations rather than them being a means of trying to communicate. '1' is a symbol not maths. Dmcq (talk) 21:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're projecting your lack of comprehension on me, and are not defining your terms or providing counterexamples. Read my actual words, not my mind: One can say, given an equation with two variables, in which the first variable, which we shall name wye, equals a second variable, which we shall call ecks where ecks is multiplied by itself, the rate of change in the variable wye per the rate of change in the variable ecks is twice the value of ecks.

Now, it's a lot easier to write if y=x^2, then dy/dx=2x. But the math itself would make no sense at all if it could not be explained in words, and indeed it can only be learnt first by using words, then by showing how this is expressed more economically using symbols. Once one has memorized these things (and note that one has also first learnt what equations, multiplication, and variables are via speech) it's much easier to use technical language and symbols and forget that at some point one was taught the basic principles through language. μηδείς (talk) 02:55, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Especially when it's hot off the press. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:56, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't heard of Linguistic Turn but it sounds like a topic in philosophy of mind, that language is thought: see Language and thought. I wonder what the current status of this theory is. Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow AAUI proposes there are two kinds of thought, the fast instinctive kind and the slower calculational kind. I haven't read the book yet but maybe the slow mode is linguistic and the fast mode is more somatic or visual. (Added:) Anyway, it doesn't have much to do with math, though there's a separate topic of mathematical platonism. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 02:15, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As noted above, Linguistic Turn is not really a school of philosophy, the term is an exonym devised to describe a bunch of people whose philosophy centered around the notion of relativism, specifically that reality was relative to one's language. It isn't really a term used by people who hold such beliefs. --Jayron 32 13:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of the linguistic turn is that it would absolutely not reject the formal and mathematical description of reality. You have to look at the philosophical context in which this point of view emerged. You had Frege producing a rigorous mathematical logic for the first time, and philosophers like Bertrand Russell and early Wittgenstein were incredibly optimistic about the prospects of this for solving philosophical problems, now that we had a systematic method through which we could state them clearly. But as it turned out, mere logic was nowhere near enough to solve the most intractable problems (though this project provided a lot more clarity in some issues than philosophers had previously enjoyed, notably around scepticism, the problem of induction and ethical subjectivism). It turned out that logic wasn't enough because English words were not precise enough to capture philosophical concepts in their entirety, so the 'linguistic turn' came about as philosophers realised they might make progress on philosophical problems by investigating what words mean. The idea is you can't answer (for example) "What is knowledge?" without having a clear understanding of "What does 'knowledge' mean?". So after the linguistic turn philosophers (at least, analytic philosophers, but the linguistic turn was almost exclusively an analytic phenomenon) didn't reject the formal description of reality, they just realised it could only get us so far in terms of solving philosophical problems. But very few analytic philosophers would reject the idea that reality can be described or understood in formal or mathematical terms, and it would be regarded as a critical flaw in a system of thought if someone did, but they instead believe that such a description can only take us so far, because so much of our understanding of the world is founded in vague and imprecise language. Dan Hartas (talk) 21:53, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Specialist risk escalation in prince2[edit]

In the PRINCE2 project management model, are engineering or other specialist risks escalated in the same way as general project management risks? 82.132.221.211 (talk) 18:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Basically yes, PRINCE2 is ISO compliant. See Project Management Body of Knowledge and Risk management tools. Note that "a risk owner is a person or entity that has been given the authority to manage a particular risk and is accountable for doing so" (iso-31000-terms). --Askedonty (talk) 18:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rifle in Expert Infantryman Badge[edit]

Resolved

What is the model of the rifle featured in the Expert Infantryman Badge? Scala Cats (talk) 21:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's the Springfield Arsenal Musket, Model 1795 - see Combat_Infantryman_Badge#Badge_design, which uses the same model rifle. Mikenorton (talk) 22:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]