WHEN I GO HOME AND SEE THAT MY KID BROTHER HAS NICER THINGS THAN ME
TRUTH
How to Say What You Want to Say but Not Say What May Lead Others to Say What You Did Not Mean for Them to Say
I hope the title was enjoyed; it was all the creativity I could muster up. It may be a bit odd and may be lackluster or too cliche; I realize this, and I think that it could (will/is) serve as a nutshell-representation of its very definition (or just make my lack of humor make me sound less pretentious). In the field of science, to summarize this post - an abstract if you will - word choice and semantics are often an issue as one word may imply a train of thought while another may exclude others. As such, it is can be a cause for argument on topics unintended by the author, with people going off in wrought over a perceived understanding. I will start with this quote from Burghardt’s The Genesis of Animal Play where he is not only identifying a phenomena (and much, much more), but he defines it:
“Play is not only a word that has meant different things throughout the years in English-speaking cultures. Words in any language can always mean more or less than the phenomenon to be captured. For example, other languages often do not have any word at all that captures what we casually mean by play in English (Bax, 1977). Consequently, developing a set of criteria for identifying “play” in a scientific sense should not be held hostage to the various ways in which the English word is use (Sutton-Smith, 1977).”
By the constraints of our own language, a flat common-ground between the individual cultural (moreso: societal) differences under the one tongue (as influenced through self- and regional-variations, but also of different tongues), speaking one’s mind and expressing explicit thought is difficult to do; truly, it is the effort of every scientist, at the end of work, to plainly state, with no more or less, what exactly happened and should be taken away. In laymen’s term, it is hard to write when there are not only many perspectives and perceptions on vocabulary and grammar, but also when wrought is an active mechanism in many readers’ minds (especially in Western society).
I pull from this literature on Scala Naturae, a philosophy that many nonscientific people still believe in today, if only by way of not being informed that it is incorrect thought.
There are a few important pieces of information and talking points I will pull from this page (that ultimately serve this post as foods for thought):
- “Progressive” and “Non-Progressive”
- Adaptive vs Adaptation
- Conflicting thoughts (by way of listing several ideals with strong favor, leaving sides at be, and not linking or giving conclusion on the former opinionated bants)
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"I’ve come, however, on a special mission on behalf of my constituency, which are the 10-to-the-18th-power - that’s a million trillion - insects and other small creatures, and to make a plea for them. If we were to wipe out insects alone, just that group alone, on this planet, which we are trying hard to do, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land, and within a few months."
E.O. Wilson, TED Prize 2007 acceptance speech
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"Thus, at the epistemological heart of this volume is the conviction that when we deal with something as complex and enigmatic as play, the efforts and ideas of prior laborers in the sand dunes of play must be considered and evaluated with respect."
Gordon M. Burghardt, The Genesis of Animal Play
