inarticulable knowledge
For a moment you’re able to shake off the spell of language and see things as they are, in all their unknowable complexity. This world is far bigger than the handful of places you’ve seen or heard about; your inner experience is far richer than the stories you tell yourself; your loved ones are far deeper than the roles they play in your life; stra
... See moreJohn Koenig • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Each word is a portable cathedral in which we clarify and sanctify our experience, a reliquary and a laboratory, holding the history of our search for meaning and the pliancy of the possible future, of there being richer and deeper dimensions of experience than those we name in our surface impressions. In the roots of words we find a portal to the ... See more
Maria Popova • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
And so, while language is necessary, it does a disservice to reality. In attempting to describe the indescribable, words constrain reality. Through simplifications, generalizations, and connotations they mischaracterize and water it down. They fail to capture the complexity, uniqueness, and dynamism of life. And as a result, we never truly see, und... See more
The Pursuit
“…there’s a huge blind spot in the language of emotion, vast holes in the lexicon that we don’t even know we’re missing. We have…only a rudimentary vocabulary to capture the delectable subtleties of the human experience. Words will never do us justice, but we have to try anyway.”
Seth T. Harrell • Affective Foresight
Words are lossy approximations though. The bandwidth of language is lower than the bandwidth of perception. Sampling with words is like taking a photo with an old camera that can see only a small number of colors.
Mind The Gaps
he felt incapable of reaching into the maelstrom of feelings and language inside him and pushing words out of his mouth.
Ann Napolitano • Hello Beautiful: THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Wittgenstein said that “you cannot enter worlds for which you do not have the language.” Jenny Odell, in How to Do Nothing, discusses how learning the language of birders helped her distinguish better between different birds. One of the most pleasurable parts of learning a new domain for me is developing the language that accompanies the developmen... See more
