Nate Lanxon

Is astro-physics hindered by our language?

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Einstein died trying to develop a Grand Unified Theory of the Universe. The problem could be that he spoke German and the Universe doesn’t.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about potential Grand Unified Theories of the Universe, and separately about language. It struck me on a bus just now that perhaps one of the limitations we experience in understanding how the Universe fundamentally operates, is caused by our own languages.

The following scenario came into my head that lead to this thought. Let’s say an English speaker heads to Japan and wants to tell a Japanese speaker, for whatever reason, that he is happy. Saying “I am happy,” means nothing to a Japanese speaker, just as saying “Shiawase da naa,” would mean nothing to our English speaker.

So instead, he simply smiles widely. The emotion is conveyed and, more importantly, it’s understood. And without uing the languages we’ve developed for ourselves.

It occurred to me after thinking this, that part of the problems we have with understanding things so alien to human understanding, stems from the fact that we try and quantify and talk of them using language and terminology we’ve developed ourselves.

I think of the word ‘infinity’. To me, infinity isn’t a thing; it’s not a tangible object. Rather, it’s a word we’ve slapped on something that doesn’t exist, so we have a way of talking about it as if it did. Now I don’t believe in physical infinities. I don’t like to think the singularities at the centres of black holes have an infinitely huge gravitational pull. I’m not suggesting the gravitaional pulls are not there — obviously — or that they don’t function exactly as they appear to function, but that we’ve slapped a word around them that’s blurring our understanding.

There are so many potential explanations for how black holes work, but I wonder if one of the things we’re causing problems for ourselves by using, is terminology and language. ‘Inifinity’, ‘dimensions’, ‘wave-particle duality’… all terms we’ve wrapped around ideas or observations. What if our understanding of these words and the concepts and scenarios they represent, are standing in the way of us better understanding the actual, non-tangible, ‘things’ themselves?

I’m not saying I think I belive this at all, of course. Just that it was a thought. What do you think?