Tag: Leibniz

Language Insufficiency Hypothesis: The Genealogy of Language Failure

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1ā€“2 minutes

I published A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis this month, and this is one of a series of videos summarising the content. In this segment, Iā€™m discussing Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency

In this video, I touch on Plato to Barthes and Foucault. Derrida gets no love, and I mention bounded rationality, but not Simon. I discuss Steven Pinker’s dissent in more detail in a later chapter.

Below, I’ve included some artefacts from the book.

Image: Chapter 1: Page 1

And always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.
ā€” Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography

Image: Genealogy of Insufficiency: A Historical Trajectory
Image: Table of Contents

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Written by Bry Willis

microglyphics

Leibniz’ Blockchain Revolution

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The first thing that popped into my head was blockchain.

Polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646ā€“1716), coincidental discoverer of differential calculus with Isaac Newton, was also an Age ofĀ Reason (or Rationalism) philosopher. Whilst listening to a lectureĀ (NĀŗ 5) about Leibniz’ monism (whence: monads), wherein he believed that all substance is comprised of monadsā€”think of them as like atomsā€”, whichĀ Ā containĀ ‘entelechy‘ (from Aristotle’s Greek,Ā į¼Ī½Ļ„ĪµĪ»Ī­Ļ‡ĪµĪ¹Ī±*), Ā« an inner principle that unfolds all the changes it goes through with respect to other substances, that everything true of the substance, including its relations to all otherĀ things, must be deductible from itĀ Ā».

The first thing that popped into my head was blockchain, that a thing would contain within itself the entireĀ historyĀ of itself, in particular, it’s spatiotemporal relationships. Of course, this is not a very tight analogy, but I thought I’d share it anyway.

 

*Etymology:Ā entelekheia:Ā en– (within), –teleos– (end or perfection), and –ekhein (to be in a certain state).