3.9 Foggy and dark

There are gradations of light: from blinding radiance through gradually thickening twilight to complete, hopeless darkness. Similarly, in a natural language there are different degrees of meaningfulness: from complete and clear meaning through vague and unintelligible to perfect meaninglessness, devoid of even structural certainty.

Not only in everyday reasoning, but also in physics there are different levels of meaningfulness, and hence, meaninglessness. They are generally in any arbitrarily rigorous and accurate scientific theory. And this is especially noticeable in the period of its formation and in the period of revision. As examples show, taken from one of the most exact sciences - modern physics, the scientific presentation is sometimes vague and even dark, and, moreover, for quite objective reasons. It is natural to expect that with the distance from modern, highly developed science into the depths of ages, the opacity of research texts should increase more and more.

The success of communication depends largely on the clarity and uniqueness of the language used. The speaker always vaguely risks being misunderstood or misunderstood at all. Dark speeches are forgiven only by the soothsayers and the prophets: the very subject of their judgments is not certain.

Where the least darkness is not only permissible, but even the nebula, is in science. It is represented - and, in general, quite rightly - by the sphere of the most transparent and meaningful use of the language and the ideal to which the communication of people in other areas should strive.

But it is clear that absolute transparency of the meaning is unattainable even in science. And this is connected, first of all, not with the subjective and random errors of individual researchers, but with the very nature of scientific knowledge.

The idea of ​​the world, given by science, develops gradually, and there is no such limit, after which there will be nothing to explore and clarify. In addition, the constant expansion of knowledge makes periodically revise and restructure the very picture of the world created by science. This leads to the fact that some fragments of such a picture lose their former stability and clarity, and they have to be re-interpreted and reinterpreted. The arguments about objects that are not yet fully comprehended by science or have not gained solid place in its structure and connections, of necessity, are not sufficiently unambiguous and defined, or simply rates.

Speaking of foggy, both in science and in language in general, one should always take into account that it is not some kind of intrinsically intrinsic characteristic of a language completely unrelated to the environment in which it is always immersed. And all the more it is not in all its cases the result of a simple inability to use the language properly. Many threads misty coupled with life itself, the fabric of which permeates and makes the tongue elastic.

In natural language, there is no clear distinction between meaningful and more or less foggy, there are no once and for all established rules to distinguish between them. What can be reasoned with full sense and which does not allow such reasoning is ultimately determined by the level of knowledge and human practice.

In conclusion, we must pay attention to another case. Involuntary violation of the rules of language use is an important and permanent source of nebula and darkness. Attempts to speak out about what is still seen vaguely and indistinctly are another equally constant and even more important source of them. In the first case, unlike the second, the ambiguity of the expression is simply a mistake. It reflects not some difficultly expressed mystery of the subject under discussion, but only the speaker’s inability to speak clearly about it. Such inability only darkens the real secret, if it is, of course, by adding to it syntactic and semantic riddles.

From these cases of nebula and darkness, it is necessary, of course, to distinguish conscious, or, as they say, genre, nebula and darkness of literary or other text. Literary scholars sometimes call it "incoherent speech."

There are speeches - the meaning of Dark Il is insignificant. But they can not listen without worry.

In the general case, nebula and darkness are unpleasant, although often inevitable companions of communication through language. It is desirable to get rid of them as far as possible. But genre nebula and darkness have all the rights to appear at the right time on a convenient scene.