Thank you for your letter. I very much agree thats in addition
to serving as a pointer to experience (Erleben) language
exhibits a reality of its own. About 50 or 60 years ago,
there was a surge of interest concerning language.
William Empson published a book, Five Types of Ambiguity,
I believe was its title which I don't think I ever read.
I'm under the impression that he was intent on rehabilitating
the language of poetry as distinct from the language of science.
There had developed, as you may know, in the 1920's in Vienna,
a school of philosophy known as Der Wiener Kreis, the Vienna
Circle under the aegis of Moritz Schlick, who elaborated a
theory of logical positivism at the heart of which was the concept
of the Protocol Sentence, a statement so structured as to serve
as an unambiguous canon of scientific meaning. The Vienna Circle
was very influential, especially in the US and thinkers such as
Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Richard von Mises,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
reflected its dogmas. I interpret Basic English, a functional subset
of the language, developed by Charles K. Ogden and I.A. Richards to
be a corollary of the linguistics of logical positivism. These men
had no understanding of Kierkegaard, Hoelderlin, Spinoza or Rilke;
I myself am embarrassed by the shallowness with which they presume
to interpret the spirit and the world. My own understanding and
experience with language is diametrically opposite. The unavoidable
ambiguity of language seems to me essential to its meaning,
constituting a limit to scientific discourse which cannot be
circumvented. But, as always, I may be wrong.