Self-Installing Language

A Self-Installing Universal Language, Part IV

By John Taylor; 2009 Jan 01, 02 Sharaf, 165 BE

Up until the 19th Century it was generally believed, following stories in the Bible, that Adam devised a single, perfect language in Eden and that this primordial language, based on reality rather than illusion, was spoken right up until human arrogance built the tower of Babel and broke speech into many languages. The dream of that age was to reconstruct the pristine language of Eden, the original language of a united human race. Early attempts to devise a universal language were thus backward looking, inspired by a quest for the long lost lingo of Eden, not what we now expect, a futuristic vision of things to come. A universal language was thought to involve not only human speech but also that of animals and indeed the entire universe. This is reminiscent of how some quantum physicists are maintaining today that the universe is acting as a giant calculating machine. To speak the language of Adam would be to see the machineries of Creation at first hand. Having seen them, we could speak and act them out too.

We have seen that Comenius divides everything into three parts, knowledge, will and action, and human activity into three crafts associated with them, science, religion and politics. We also saw that this is straight from the Greek view. But there is more to it than that. In the history of education, Frances Bacon and Jan Amos Comenius are often lumped under the "sense realist" school <http://www.archive.org/stream/studentstextbook00duggrich/studentstextbook00duggrich_djvu.txt>. That is, they theorized that the mind learns only through the intermediary of the senses, especially sight. This was derived from the contemporary understanding of the Bible, which the Gutenberg printing press had made affordable for the first time.

A new universal language, Comenius held, would reform all three stages, knowledge, volition and action, completely and concurrently, since language is the "bond and interpreter" (Ch. 14, para 3) among them. Comenius held that if we reformed our vision, language and action a new method of self-directed language would be possible. The universal language would become, as it were, "self-installing,"

"If the question is asked, 'How is this possible?' my answer is that it will be impossible either to teach or learn the new language by interchanging words, phrases, and sentences, which is the method at present employed in teaching and learning ordinary languages. Instead we should adopt the method of Paradise, which consists of seeing, speaking, and practising for ourselves. The candidate for the new language should be confronted with real objects to see, hear, taste, and touch, so that he may grasp them through his own senses: then each object should be named separately and the pupil asked to repeat its name, seeing and saying it for himself at the same time, until the same thing is clearly conceived in his mind and expressed in speech in the same way." (Panorthosia, Ch. 14, para 17, p. 213)

The first step of learning for Comenius, then, is to see with your own eyes and through that gain a consensus with others ("without vision the people perish," the Proverb says). Having seen we then speak the lesson, and finally practice it. Three steps. Comenius thus applied "sense realism" to language learning. This was a tremendous improvement over the random, rote methods of teaching Latin that preceded him.

In the above Comenius calls this not "sense realism" but the "method of paradise," because seeing, speaking and acting were the basic job description of Adam in Eden. Adam witnessed each creature as it came into being, he then gave it a name and God watched the results in their behavior, in mutual interaction.

In the Baha'i principles this sense realism is equivalent to the first principle, search for truth. Baha'u'llah certainly seems to agree that vision is the fundamental "agent and guide" to learning in the first Taraz,

"We cherish the hope that through the loving-kindness of the All-Wise, the All-Knowing, obscuring dust may be dispelled and the power of perception enhanced, that the people may discover the purpose for which they have been called into being. In this Day whatsoever serveth to reduce blindness and to increase vision is worthy of consideration. This vision acteth as the agent and guide for true knowledge. Indeed in the estimation of men of wisdom keenness of understanding is due to keenness of vision." (Tablets, 35)

Thus for Comenius the universal language will not be an abstract entity learned in isolation from world governance. Only by reforming all three, science, religion and politics, at the same time can such language be made up and taught. It would be born along with a universal curriculum where theory, planning and practice are worked out all at once. Thus Comenius continues,

"Then if Universal Books, containing accurate descriptions of things, are correctly written in this language, and circulated to nations all over the world and introduced into their schools, our task will be accomplished, since the minds of the younger generation will eagerly seize upon everything, captivated, as it were, by the sweet harmony of things, ideas, and language, and will readily continue to study them." (Ch. 14, para 17, p. 213)

The push for a world curriculum would come from our inherent desire to investigate reality. The pull, on the other hand, comes from our common human nature, from love's attractive force. This is termed in the Baha'i principles the oneness of humanity.

"Our love for mankind and the universal yearning for conversation should be sufficient to influence us in favour of desiring and trying to achieve this. For since we are all one blood, brothers and sisters, dwellers together in the one Home of the World, we ought to live and talk together, and to engage in the mutual exchange of advice; yet this is impossible owing to the diversity of languages: what an absurd situation! There are so many uncivilised nations in the world, sharing the same nature with us, and all seized with desire for the Highest Good: yet they do not know it and we are unable to demonstrate it to them."

"They are all `serving an unknown God' (as one may see from their altars, temples, holidays, and ceremonies) yet we are unable to proclaim the true God to them as Paul could do to the Athenians.

"Lastly, they are seeking a political system and peaceful way of life, yet they are unable to find it (acting contrariwise to their goal), and we are unable to reveal to them where their faults lie, and how they should mend their ways. Therefore there is an urgent need to find a cure for such serious faults, and this is possible only through the use of a universal language which cannot be introduced into the world until we devise one which is natural and fluent and suitable for universal adoption." (Panorthosia, Ch. 14, para 6, pp. 208-209)

I will close with some points that Oxford scholar Anthony Smith made in a review of a critical biography of Comenius. These comments help place Comenius in the history of ideas. It is interesting that on Abdu'l-Baha's first trip to London in 1911 somebody saw a close parallel between Him and Tolstoy (Abdu'l-Baha in London, pp. 94-95). Smith places Tolstoy in the same tradition leading up to the "world brain" movement of the 1990's.

"Deeply buried in Comenius's ideas are the lessons derived from attempts to impart the Judaeo-Christian scriptures to centuries of children; his approach is steeped in religion. There is a line running from Comenius (and Bacon) to Tolstoy and Froebel which emphasises the integrity and inextricability of the moral, the cultural and the religious. Comenius is separate from that other line of pragmatic, progressive and secular thinking about education which links, say, Rousseau and Dewey. But if you are looking for the roots of Kenneth Baker's view of the national curriculum you are more likely to detect it in Comenius than in Rousseau.

"Buber's concern with the "co-intentional dialogue of teacher and pupil" is Comenian, as is Tolstoy's vision of love as the heart of the educational process. The value of Murphy's resurrection of this 17th-century divine is that his book also illuminates and categorises so many strands of 20th-century thinking about education which have become interwoven in our own day into a stodgy liberalism in which many traditions are fused - or fudged.

"The new translation of Panorthosia (published with a useful preface summarising Comenius's great projects) gives us access to a typical piece of his writing in which he sets out one of his universal schemes to reform education, church and politics through good learning...

"Comenius's ideas are paralleled in this century by H. G. Wells whose writings on the idea of World Mind and World Brain have been brought together by Alan Mayne with a comprehensive introduction. Wells wrote at the eve of a war similar to the Thirty Years War in the havoc it wreaked upon Europe, and with some acknowledged debt to the work of Comenius. Wells's scheme was for the reorganisation and rededication of all the reliable information and education available in the world. He wanted the founding of a new social organ or institution "whereby we can solve the jigsaw puzzle and bring all the scattered and ineffective mental wealth of our world into something like a common understanding, and into effective reaction upon our vulgar, everyday political, social and economic life".

"The world has now grown irritated with universal schemes; the more brotherhood is preached the more our sceptical hackles rise and, certainly, Wells writes with the verve of a utopian snake-oil salesman, although his idea of using universal forms of knowledge to eradicate mutual suspicions is today enjoying a powerful new vogue among people who see in the computerisation of information the tool of a real utopian politics. Alan Mayne has long worked in this field and uses his introduction to restate the position of 1990s World Brain enthusiasts.

"We are so habituated today to seeing education treated as an instrument of wealth creation or for creating voting citizens, or to inculcate correct thinking about culture, politics and self-fulfilment, that it is quite hard at first to read this material with the seriousness it deserves. For Mayne (and Wells) are saying that education, if it uses all the techniques available, could become the means by which some vision of human brotherhood could be given meaning and reality. One has to suspend one's ever-ready pre-jaundiced scepticism but this reader found himself doing so willingly once entered into the spirit of the discourse. Cybernetic idealism has a place."

from a review of: Comenius: A Critical Reassessment of his Life and Work Author - Daniel Murphy ISBN - 0 7165 2537 2 Publisher - Irish Academic Press, at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=163333&sectioncode=42

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John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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