Thursday, July 24, 2008

The World and Man’s essential place in it

Vitruvian WorldOkay, I admit that sounds a bit overblown and vaguely philosophical — calling to mind subjective idealism, phenomenalism, the intellectual debates of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and so on. But while that’s an interesting subject in its own right (feel free to stop by Wikipedia on your way out), I had something else in mind. As usual, it all starts with words. So perhaps I might restate the title of this post as something more like: “world” and the essential place of “man” in its etymology.

If language really does define our perceptual limits (I won’t digress into a discussion of the theories of Sapir/Whorf), then it makes sense that we might find “man” in the “world” — human beings can’t really imagine a world without them in it, after all. I know I can’t! ;)

The word world derives from Old English weorold (interestingly, as you’ll soon appreciate, a feminine noun — I wonder whether this is the same grammatical process responsible for distinctions like the French le mort “a dead man” versus la morte “death, as an abstract concept”). [1] Skeat points out in his Etymological Dictionary that the word is clearly a composite form [2]. Cognate forms among the other Germanic languages include Old Norse (and Modern Icelandic) veröld, Old High German weralt (cf. Modern German Welt), Old Low Franconian uuerolt, and though not attested, I feel confident theorizing Gothic *waíralds [3].

Of what individual elements, then, might weorold be composed? Spenser thought it was war + old ; that is, the domain of an ever ongoing strife. So he says in the Faerie Queene“But when the world woxe old, it woxe warre old / (Whereof it hight)” [4]. A clever guess, and one that seems apt enough given mankind’s perennial struggles, but wrong. Rather, the word comprises the two joined elements of man + age = “the age of man” = therefore, the world. Thus, OE wer “man” (cf. Modern English werewolf = “man-wolf”, and cf. Latin vir “man”) + eald “old, ancient, aged” (cf. eald-dóm “age”); and likewise, ON verr + öld; OHG wer + alt; OLF uuer + olt — all from Primitive Germanic *weraz + *alda.

Interesting, no? And it turns out that world is hardly the only word dependent on man. Consider Latin sæculum “lifetime, age of man” (from one of the oldest known Indo-European roots, meaning “to tie, bind”). As it developed, the Latin word retained both the senses of time, cf. Modern French siècle “century”; and world, cf. Modern English secular, meaning “worldly, mundane”. Speaking of mundane, which itself derives from the Latin word mundus “universe, world” (cf. French monde, Spanish mundo, Italian mondo), it’s tempting to look for the man in mundus as well, but that’s a misstep. The original meaning of mundus is “order”, as in a world or universe arranged neatly according to a divine plan. (The Greek κόσμος carries the same original sense and survives into Modern English in the words Cosmos, cosmic, and as a combining form in words such as cosmology.)

It is equally tempting to look for man in human, but the etymology of that word is a little different. Even so, we still can find a connection to the world in it. Turning back to the familiar Latin source, the adjective hūmānus “pertaining to man”, from the noun homo “man”, we find something surprising: homo derives from humus “the ground, the earth, the soil” from which, according to the Christian tradition, the first Man came [5]. The word humus has survived into Modern English as well, referring to fertile, organic topsoil suitable for growing things. Where did the Romans get this idea? From the Hebrew Bible, one would surmise. There, the first Man took his name, Adam (Hebrew אדם), from the substance out of which God made him, the earth (Hebrew אֲדָמָה /adama/). Genesis 2:7 [6] may therefore be one of the oldest statements of etymology we know!

How much of this connection between man and the earth is due to our own anthropocentric view of the universe? All of it, really; Man was, and is, the central actor on the stage of the world (to paraphrase Shakespeare). After all, without Man, who would there be to speak the word world — or anything else, for that matter? I suppose our glossopoeic nature gives us license to name, even to define, the world with our own distinctly human nomenclature. If we one day should find that chimpanzees, dolphins, or bees have genuine languages of their own, then who knows? We may have to rethink our whole Weltanschauung. :)



[1] Does it go without saying that there are several different dialectal variations of the word, as of most Old English words? It should. “Old English” usually corresponds to the West Saxon dialect, simply because of the extent of the surviving lexis, though Modern English, in fact, is closer to the Mercian dialect. At any rate, other attested forms include weoruld, weorld, woruld, worold, etc.

[2] Skeat, Walter William. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2nd ed. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1893, p. 718.

[3] Built from the same components as the other cognate forms; in this case, the attested Gothic waír “man” + alds “age, life” (see Wright, Joseph. A Primer of the Gothic Language. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1892, pp. 238, 212, for these words. Putting them together, however right or wrong, was me.) There is also an attested word with a similar composite meaning in Gothic: manaséþs “mankind, multitude, world” (lit. “man-seed”).

[4] Book IV, Canto VIII, ll. 276–7.

[5] Valpy, F.E.J. An Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language. London: Baldwin, Longman, and Whittaker, 1828, p. 188. Note that other mythologies explain the origin of Man differently; for example, in the Old Norse tradition, the first Man and Woman were Ask and Embla, the Ash and Elm tree, respectively.

[6] In the King James translation, “And the Lord God formed man [Adam] of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” emphasis added. (The original Hebrew, וייצר יהוה אלהים את האדם עפר מן האדמה ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים ויהי האדם לנפש חיה)

14 comments:

  1. "human beings can’t really imagine a world without them in it"

    I am right now imagining the world 15 million years in the past... and now the world 4 years in the future... and now Mars. All without human beings.

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  2. Thanks for the comment, N.E.B.

    I am right now imagining the world 15 million years in the past... and now the world 4 years in the future... and now Mars. All without human beings.

    You are, eh? What color is the sun in this vision? :) That is, can your imagining in this case truly boast the “inner consistency of reality [...] which commands or induces Secondary Belief” — or is it just the merest acknowledgment of something possible, but not graspable?

    If I may lean further on Tolkien to clearify: “The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. [...] The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, [on the other hand,] the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression , may vary in vividness and strength [...]” (OFS, expanded edition, p. 59).

    It was this latter, more extensive form of Imagination, leading in the direction Tolkien called Art, that I was thinking of when I made my statement. But perhaps your powers of imagination are a bit better developed than mine, or perhaps I am a bit too fond of my own ego (both possible, hahae). In either case, and at least as far as the picture of the world in words is concerned, I have difficulty divorcing human beings from it.

    And “the world 4 years in the future [...] without human beings” — that’s a bit alarming! Do you know something we don’t? :)

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  3. Ah yes. I have a friend who takes all of that stuff quite seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of concern for the future as well — it just isn’t based on the numerical limitations of the Mayan calendar. :)

    For an idea of where I’m coming from, let me recommend three books: 1) The Fourth Turning, by William Strass and Neil Howe; 2) American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips; and 3) The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, by James Howard Kunstler. Actually, I’ll add a fourth, The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, by Tim Flannery.

    Sobering stuff, but all well worth reading. (If this isn’t depressing enough, try Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.) And that’s as much politics as you’re likely to get here at Lingwë.

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  4. Interesting note on KOSMOS: it originally held the sense of "to adorn," and the verb form came to be used to denote the action of dressing. Thus, cosmetics.

    An aside: I totally agree with you analysis. It was a great post, Jason. And I would go further, in a Wittgenstinian and Derridian vein, to say our entire framework for understanding is encompassed by our own linguistic framework. I appreciate your quotes from Tolkien, and I would add that even the faculty of imagination cannot be divorced from the language through which we experience, understand, label (or perhaps more properly, NAME), and interpret the world. All our imaginings of a future world, a past world, or an imaginary world (which may or may not encompass the previous two...but probably does) are done so within our linguistic construct.

    That is why, in reality Jason, I believe in this blog and frequent it. There are blogs aplenty, but language is something we have to contemplate if we ever want to come closer to understanding ourselves and how we perceive the world. It may be a hobby to you, but is a useful one, and has so many implications. Anthrocentricism is our only option, cosmologically, because it is all we know. And if we are subscribers to a grander story (but not, per se, a metanarrative, which I would reject on the basis of a more-than-cordial dislike of post-Enlightenment rationalism), then that plays into our rhetoric of a cosmos as well - usually anthropologically-based ideas/praxes.

    I'm heading deep somewhere, and away from your post. But all that to say this: ROCK ON, LINGWE!

    Another aside: Eskimos have a name not only for each of their fingers, but also the space between each finger. They just see something there that we (here I speak geocentrically as a Midwestern American) don't. Did they see something first and name it, or does the name make them see it? The question is useless, and probably meaningless. But they cannot see their hand without those words, this much is certain.

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  5. That is why, in reality Jason, I believe in this blog and frequent it. There are blogs aplenty, but language is something we have to contemplate if we ever want to come closer to understanding ourselves and how we perceive the world. It may be a hobby to you, but is a useful one, and has so many implications. [...]

    To me, words are the foundation for everything. Sure, there might have been a world before man, and even a “man” before language, and there was certainly a history before writing came about to transmit it to us in words we can read and ponder today. But I live in my own life, not in those conceivable but impossibly remote possible “lives” before or without humankind; and without words, I can’t imagine what my perception of the world around me would be like. (Which is the very point of the matter — that I can’t imagine it.) I would surely perceive it ... but how?

    I’m heading deep somewhere, and away from your post. But all that to say this: ROCK ON, LINGWE!

    Thank you, Alex! I intend to keep on rocking all the way from Pierre to Petra. ;)

    Another aside: Eskimos have a name not only for each of their fingers, but also the space between each finger. They just see something there that we (here I speak geocentrically as a Midwestern American) don’t. Did they see something first and name it, or does the name make them see it? The question is useless, and probably meaningless. But they cannot see their hand without those words, this much is certain.

    That’s very interesting. I have not heard this before, but it’s another good example of a glossocentric ontology.

    Interesting note on KOSMOS: it originally held the sense of “to adorn,” and the verb form came to be used to denote the action of dressing. Thus, cosmetics.

    Just a bit of a quibble here. You’re right that κόσμος did come to carry that sense, but it’s not the original sense, but a later, secondary one, coming from the earlier notion of “order, orderliness”. You see the same think with the Latin mundus, actually. Before it came to be a noun referring to the “world, universe”, it was an adjective meaning “clean, neat, orderly”, and which (like your good example, cosmetic), also came to be mundus “a lady’s ornaments, apparatus, or dress”. See Valpy, p. 274.

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  6. I'm gonna quibble back :)

    There are three early attestations I know of specifically where kosmeo was used in the sense of adorn, especially of women: Homeric Hymn 6, 11 (as early as 7th century BC); Hesiodus, Op. 72 (also c. 7th century BC), and also Herodotus IV (5th cent..well, you know), although this sense was more "to furnish" than specifically "adorn."

    I'm not disagreeing with you of course, that the early sense was "to order," only defending that literary attestation that I know of puts this word very early indeed, and I was unable to find a reference for order significantly older than those I just cited. Valpy is not immediately available to me, so I can't read your material. But I'm just not sure we can know what was the earlier sense. Perhaps they would not have seen much a difference, and our arguments are simply an English distinction?

    By words being the foundation, do you mean the words themselves, or the words within the linguistic construct to which the words belong? What I mean is that language is more than simply words - there is a grammar and a logic to language, and different languages obviously possess different logics and grammars from others. Perhaps this is what you meant - so clarifying question. But I think our framework for understanding, perceiving, or interpreting the world lies not only in our words but the logic to which they belong.

    Also, language is inextricably connected to culture and rhetoric, which has much to do with how we view the world.

    You said: "glossocentric ontology." Props, bro. That was nice.

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  7. At the risk of seeing these comments starting to get rather lengthy ...

    I’m gonna quibble back :)

    By all means. I certainly don’t know everything. Err, not yet, anyway. ;)

    There are three early attestations I know of specifically where kosmeo was used in the sense of adorn, especially of women: Homeric Hymn 6, 11 (as early as 7th century BC); Hesiodus, Op. 72 (also c. 7th century BC), and also Herodotus IV (5th cent..well, you know), although this sense was more “to furnish” than specifically “adorn.”

    I’m certainly not an expert in Greek etymology, but I will say that I looked up κόσμος as well as the verb κοσμέω in the Complete Greek and English Lexicon for the Poems of Homer (by G.Ch. Crusius, translated from the German by Henry Smith, London: Rivington’s, 1871). There, the primary definition is given in both cases as relating to “order, arrangement”, and it is the secondary definition which relates to “adornment, decoration”. The third sense of κόσμος pertains to “world, universe”. I found the same in the Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (27th revised edition, Harper & Brothers, 1878). Searching back in time, I found the Lexicon Thucydidæum: A Dictionary in Greek and English of the Words, Phrases, and Principal Idioms Contained in the History of the Peloponnesian War of Thucydides — that’s a mouthful! (London: G.B. Whittaker, 1824). There, I did find the usage your preferred usage well attested in the writings of Thucydides. This doesn’t convince me that “adornment, decoration” was the primary sense — nor indeed does that make sense to me, on an intuitive level; however, it does show that the sense you’re championing is indeed quite old.

    I’m not disagreeing with you of course, that the early sense was “to order,” only defending that literary attestation that I know of puts this word very early indeed, and I was unable to find a reference for order significantly older than those I just cited.

    Well, be unable no more: the Lexicon Thucydidæum gives examples of that sense (“order, arrangement”) dating from the 5th century, so there you go. :)

    Valpy is not immediately available to me, so I can’t read your material. But I’m just not sure we can know what was the earlier sense. Perhaps they would not have seen much a difference, and our arguments are simply an English distinction?

    Possibly. In any event, Valpy’s Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language is available online at Google Books. As well, the other books I mentioned above.

    By words being the foundation, do you mean [...]?

    I think that’s true, but what I really meant was that the words themselves were the foundation. Grammar (essentially, proper usage) tends to emerge as an epiphenomenon of words, I think. Of course, we’re getting into really speculative territory here, but just as a gedankenexperiment, it is hard to imagine the earliest hominids capable of figurative grunts and growls worrying about grammar, isn’t it? :) Or to put it another way, which comes first, the chess pieces (words) or the ways in which they can legally interact in a game of chess (the grammar)?

    Also, language is inextricably connected to culture and rhetoric, which has much to do with how we view the world.

    That is certainly true now. And by “now”, I mean over the course of the most recent few thousand years of recorded history. Going back further, it’s hard to say much about culture and rhetoric. These are relatively modern concepts.

    You said: “glossocentric ontology.” Props, bro. That was nice.

    Thanks. Glad you liked that. ;)

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  8. Hey, great response.

    My citations were 7th century, so that's older than 5th. But hey, I'll have to check out Valpy. I have Liddell and Scott - you can't go through three years of Greek without it. I don't have unabridged yet. Still on the wishlist!

    What do you mean by modern? Like, post-Enlightenment? I guess I'm asking because that depends a lot on what you mean by culture and rhetoric being modern concepts. Even so, they might be modern concepts in terms of dialogue, but culture is something that happens when humans are together, and rhetoric is, in my own thinking, the undergirder of power structures. But yeah, we need to be careful of anachronistic thinking. Also has much to do with theories of human sociological development.

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  9. Hey Alex,

    Glad to see you have found this topic so stimulating! :)

    My citations were 7th century, so that's older than 5th.

    Two of your examples were from the 7th century, yes, but one of them was from the 5th. Anyhoo, no need to split hairs ... what’s a couple hundred years among friends? ;)

    What do you mean by modern? Like, post-Enlightenment? I guess I'm asking because that depends a lot on what you mean by culture and rhetoric being modern concepts. Even so, they might be modern concepts in terms of dialogue, but culture is something that happens when humans are together, and rhetoric is, in my own thinking, the undergirder of power structures.

    Yes, it’s really a question of definition and context. Your definition of culture is the broadest one possible (which is perfectly valid), but I don’t think it’s the one most people think of first. Ditto rhetoric. We could always discuss what these mean (or survey the spectrum of possible meanings and connotations), but I think it’s getting off my main point a bit, so I think I will table that for another day (although I don’t mean that to cut you off, if you have more you’d like to say).

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  10. Yeah, we're getting into my area a little more here, which is language as a social construct and linguistic philosophy. I am very influenced by certain philosophers here, such as Wittgenstein, Derrida, and even Foucault, among others. But I didn't mean to be cantankerous or to push us off the path, just having some dialogue, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do. I continue to appreciate your intellect and industrious study as well as your clever writing.

    And a couple hundred years is NOTHING between friends :).

    An interesting place I think would be great to take your post (although, of course, conversation tabled to another debate, just a question I was mulling over when I was thinking about your post) is into the area of Narrative. Man's anthropocentric thinking, like his logic, is derived from whatever Narrative he chooses to subscribe to. This goes for his language as well. The two keys I see to how a human/community views the world is through the lenses of Language and Story. I think a wonderful study would be an examination of Tolkien's use of Narrative. I'm sure you can point me in the right direction of some studies of that nature!

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  11. Yeah, we're getting into my area a little more here, which is language as a social construct and linguistic philosophy.

    Another way of putting this is that where I’m a bit more interested in the roots, you’re a bit more interested in the branches, maybe?

    I think “Wittgenstein, Derrida, and even Foucault” might indeed have a lot to offer here. But I’m equally sure you’d be better able to articulate that than I am. Those fellas are a bit outside my expertise, though I am famiilar with them and their basic views.

    I continue to appreciate your intellect and industrious study as well as your clever writing.

    Thank you so much. It’s very nice to be appreciated. :)

    The two keys I see to how a human/community views the world is through the lenses of Language and Story.

    Of course, I assume you have read Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-stories”, from which I quoted in my first comment, above. If you haven’t, then now would be a good time. Language and Story are two essential cornerstones in the essay, as where Tolkien writes of “the Tree of Tales” and its close connection with “the tangled skein of Language.”

    I think a wonderful study would be an examination of Tolkien's use of Narrative. I’m sure you can point me in the right direction of some studies of that nature!

    In fact, I can point you in the direction of a very recent publication, which I happen to be reviewing for the next issue of Tolkien Studies: The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition, by Martin Simonson. However, you won’t find any of your postmodernists in it. For that, I would have to recommend a book which isn’t out yet (Judith Klinger’s Constructions of Authorship in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien).

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  12. Ooh, I'm very interested in your suggestions! I have read "On Fairy Stories," and it has been for me a most influential work, as I have attempted to subsume it into my thinking in dialogue with other thinkers I deeply appreciate and emulate. C. S. Lewis' "On Stories" - as well as several other essays in that collection - is also high on my list. In many ways, I think he proto-articulated much of the Narrative emphasis of later postmodern thought, especially in literature.

    Has there been many of the more postmodern Tolkien scholars? My guess is, probably not. But they will come. Much of Tolkien's emphasis on the ancient, on Language and Tradition and Narrative, really lends itself to some key themes in that framework of thought (although I hold no pretensions that Tolkien was a postmodernist - he was certainly modern). Hopefully by then, we'll be somewhere into post-postmodernism? But who knows...

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  13. Ooh, I'm very interested in your suggestions!

    Here’s another, given your liking for those essays about story-making: The Mind of the Maker, by Dorothy Sayers (a friend of CSL, and on the borders of the Inklings, though not actually a part of the group).

    Has there been many of the more postmodern Tolkien scholars? My guess is, probably not. But they will come.

    You’re right on both counts: a) not much, yet; but b) I feel sure that much of the new work on Tolkien will be headed in that direction. Then, the challenge will be how to integrate those studies with the more traditional, medievalist approaches that have been more popular. It can definitely be done, but we aren’t there quite yet.

    Indeed, I think one may accurately say that Tolkien was a man before, of, and ahead of his time. All of them seem equally true, and that may (in large part) explain his enduring popularity.

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