Pitfalls of Polysemy

In the context of Philosophy of Science, we have previously posted essays on the theme “Discovery versus Invention”, tracking more broadly with (Platonic) Realism vs. Nominalism.    A rather recondite subject, but which you may read about here, if so inclined:

    https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/discovery

Yet now, jarringly, in the day’s headlines, one reads of the fostering and festering of conspiracy theories to the effect that Covid was a deliberate laboratory product (a familiar meme, historically -- Ebola and whatever else).  To which the obvious logical response (distinct and independent from the many empirical shortcomings of such theories) is:  Cui prodest?  (Or, more forcefully, Cui effing prodest??!??)

Reportedly, something over a quarter of Americans believe this.  But what caught my eye is that nearly such a proportion of Frenchmen believe this;  and that, moreover, part of the genesis of this delusion stems from a semantic misapprehension:   an alleged polysemy of the word invention in French:

26 % des Français estiment ainsi que le SARS-CoV-2, le virus responsable de la pandémie actuelle, a été créé par l’homme. Aux Etats-Unis, selon une étude de journalism.org, ils sont même 29 % à adhérer à cette thèse pourtant battue en brèche par toutes les publications scientifiques.

Mi-mars, un internaute français scandalisé se filmait en train de commenter un brevet en virologie de l’Institut Pasteur portant sur « l’invention » (le terme juridique pour une découverte) d’un coronavirus de 2004. Bien que très mal renseignée, sa vidéo d’inspiration complotiste a été partagée plusieurs millions de fois avant d’être supprimée par Facebook.

--

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/31/l-etrange-obsession-d-un-quart-des-francais-pour-la-these-du-virus-cree-en-laboratoire_6035093_4355770.html

Now, my trusty old two-volume Harrap’s (French => English) does report such a use of invention in specialized areas:

A[rchaic]: finding, discovery (still used in (a) Ecc]lesiastic]) : Invention de la (Sainte) Croix, Invention of the Cross; (b) Jur[istic]: invention d’un trésor, finding of a treasure trove.

We are put in mind of the old anecdote about the floorplan of the (American? British?) embassy in Berlin, during the 1930’s, whose floor-plan (obtained by the Germans) listed one room as a “powder-room”.  German intel (not philologists, it seems) interpreted this as designation a secret chamber  in which the devious Anglo-Saxons were storing gun-powder.

~

Historical note:  ‘finding’, rather than ‘creating’,  is in fact the oldest attested sense of the English word invention.  We still see something of the original sense in our word inventory.

Footnote:  Example of a (presumably) non-linguistically-based instance of Corona-Conspiracy pathology:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-01/man-charged-derailing-train-hospital-ship-mercy

Social-Distancing fail

.

Michael Collins monostich

All alone, in radio silence, 

at the dark side  of the moon

[Note:  This astronaut, the "Forgotten Man" of Apollo 11, here presents an impecable, though scarcely emulable, case of Social Distancing.]

Equinox: Measure for Measure

A-dance as had their grandsires never sinned,

the giddy throng now treads the village green.

“Farewell forever to the Winter’s frost --

Let Summer be our air  forevermore.

Tear down the tower-clock of seasons’ whirl,

and let us frolic in oblivion,

our ever-noonday joys  unmarked, untimed,

and unreliev’d by memory of dark.”

But as our nature, from the Maker’s forge,

is blent of virtue, yet with vice annealed,

so shows the iron-bound justice of the Judge

in equal measure  of the Light, with Night.

The Stars Down-Under

   Orion  upside-down  /  in the topsy-turvy sky

-- James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1946)

Corona-cum-Popcorn

As a rule, I avoid disaster flix;  and shun movies about diseases ‘like the plague’.  Thus, a fortiori, disease-disaster flix.

But out of interest in the psychological dimensions of global climate change, I did watch “Take Shelter” -- which, to my delighted surprise, turned out only to pretend to be a meteorological disaster flick, but in reality is a psychological thriller.  At least, that was my take on it, in an intricate essay here.

And now Covid19 (as, when this was first posted, ebola), elbowing much else off the front page these days.

* “The Andromeda Strain”  (novel: 1969;  movie: 1971)

Michael Crichton’s novel is differently focussed from the works that follow, being about big science and extraterristrial organisms and spooky military stuff.   And it has no psychology whatsoever, just a workmanlike plot  laid out in a wooden style, interrupted from time to time by edifying mini-lectures in biology (Crichton began as a physician).

*  “The Cassandra Crossing”.()

The opening scene, in which terrorists insinuate themselves into the World Health Organization in Geneva (our own WDJ headquarters are just down the street, as it happens), and one of them gets infected in a secret lab, is a masterpiece of economy and timing.   The fact that the rest of it takes place on a train, is also to the good;  trains go with movies like peanut-butter with jelly.   And the collateral-damage/government-conspiracy plot towards the end, is even more plausible now than when the movie came out.

So, a fun watch;  but no real food for thought. 

 * “12 Monkeys”.

 (A hefty head-trip.  I would have to see it again before saying anything intelligent.)

* “Contagion”  (2011)

This one I really looked forward to, since it comes highly praised by critics, and is from the director of the excellent “Traffic” (2000);   but it turns out to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen.   That being so, there’s no point in even listing its demerits.   Just skip it.

Leaving the best till last.

*  “Outbreak” (1995)

Early on, purportedly at Fort Detrick (a site not far from where some friends of mine live), there is a useful review of the different levels of bio-hazard.  

While still in the Level-3 room, she casually takes off her mask;  and walks out, leaving the door open behind her.

Now:  As a cinephile, you ask yourself:

(a) Is this meant to be a foretoken of some horrible events that follow from this negligence?

or is it

(b) just some stupid movie sloppiness that banks on the inattentiveness of viewers to overlook? (Hitchcock famously defended this latter view.)

Having seen the movie, I can report:  (b).

OK, so, the movie is sometimes cinematically sloppy, much as that researcher was sloppy.  But over all, it repays what you spent on the popcorn.

The film has extended sequences at what purports to be the CDC.  These days, that is roughly the equivalent, in terms of tense attention, as the CTC of “24”.

Dustin Hoffman is excellent in this, at least when not bogged down in an uninteresting human-interest subplot about an ex-wife and some freaking dogs.  (Whereas Matt Damon was wasted -- in both senses -- in the wretched “Contagion”).

Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman are suitably icy in chilly roles.  (Sutherland even manages to look like ice.)

The monkey is wonderful.  This must surely rank in cinematic history among the all-time greatest performances by a capuchin.

The movie then slides off into a whiz-bang finale, basically reprising Crichton’s plot-device of a secret government plan -- there called, aptly, “Cautery” -- to simply incinerate any area harboring the otherwise unstoppable infection.  In the novel, that eventuality is avoided by a ridiculous turn of events, whereby all the virions simultaneously, in the lab and outside of it, suddenly ‘evolve’ to a non-virulent form.  In “Outbreak”, some stab is made at verisimilitude, as the immune monkey’s blood provides material for a serum.  In practice, it would be quite some time before such a serum could be developed, tested, manufactured in quantity, and distributed: by that time, everyone you had seen on the screen would have died.  But whatever.

It goes back, arguably, to 1950’s “Panic in the Streets,” in which heroic doctor Richard Widmark saves New Orleans from an outbreak of pneumonic plague carried by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2014/11/08/ebolafilm/BY3Va2qm6eSJZw35LpMjkK/story.html

Moving-West Monostichs

the poetry  of unplowed   spaces

…

this  shelterless   sweep      of prairie

-- Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

Love or Math

Re Drayton’s Endimion and Phoebe:

He would like to have depicted the Platonic ascent from carnal to intelligible love, but has really no idea of what one would find at the top of the ladder.  He has to fill up with astronomy and the theory of numbers.

-- C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1944), p. 532

Actually, not a bad expedient.

The idea is developed  here:

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-ladder-of-abstraction-with-added.html 

Note:  The title of this post alludes to Edward Frenkel’s book, Love and Math, considered here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/11/gradus-ad-parnassum.html

Bonnet Blanc vs. Blanc Bonnet

Bonnet Blanc versus Blanc Bonnet

(Or, synonyms, at daggers drawn)

I once wrote an MA thesis called Linguistic Life on the Left, a historical-semantic survey of the Berkeley linguiscape during my time there as a graduate student.  It sifted out correlations between a sect’s self-expression,  and its (sometimes partly subconscious) ideology.  A favorite schematic example  was this  one:

Given that: Groups A, B, and C are all part of what popular or pre-theoretical conception would consider “the Left” (albeit that seeming Big Tent  turns out to be a granfalloon).

And that:  Group A denounces Group C as ‘pigs’, while Group B denounces group C as ‘swine’.

From this we can conclude: virtually nothing about Group C; but that Group A and Group B are bitter enemies, barely sharing any verbiferous ether that could even attempt to pass coherent messages between them.

For: Group A derived the epithet from the rants of the American Black Panthere; Group B derived theirs from the European Marxist polemical tradition (nineteenth century et seq.)  A vast host of incompatible cultural assumptions go with each.  In keeping with the expressive ethos of the two groups, we can call the vituperative practices of A as "badmouthing"; of B  as "the ironical-polemical style".  Both manners, when well done, can afford aesthetic pleasures.

~

And now we have the following situation, in the context of the controversy over illegal immigration.

Entity A described the immigrant-source regions as “shit-holes”.

Entity B described them rather as a ‘snake-pit’.

Once again, these two entities, along with their fanbases, are not on speaking, let alone reasoning terms.

Entity A is POTUS;  Entity B is a Circuit Court of California.  [My source for that was NPR’s All Things Considered; for some reason, a string-search in Google news is not turning up anything relevant.  Thus evanescent are the bubbles that burble from the media.]  From similar observations, A and B draw opposite conclusions.  A: Who would want to bring in people from such areas?  B: Who would be so unconscionable as to send people back to such areas?

There is another linguistic/political parallel between that case and the one described in the previous section.  In either case, one term of the “synonymic antithesis” is more populist in tone (pigs; shithole), the other more literary and traditional (swine; snake-pit).