Single Idea 1632

[catalogued under 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation]

Full Idea

Translation of our remote past or future discourse into the terms we now know could be about as tenuous and arbitrary a projection as translation of a heathen language was seen to be.

Gist of Idea

Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages

Source

Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.V,p.25)

Book Reference

Quine,Willard: 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' [Columbia 1969], p.25


A Reaction

Is he seriously saying that we can't understand Shakespeare, because holism implies that we would have to be Elizabethans? So scholarship is in vain? Is yesterday the 'past'?