Re: [tied] Re: *dan-

Dear Stefan,

If correspondences crop up in a regular fashion, we get a case worth exploring. But I deliberately quoted examples of "sheer coincidence" (pace Jung and his disciples). In many cases "matches" evaporate if you know anything about the history of the words in question, as in the case of mati : mata (Greek mati derives from abbreviated ommation, the first syllable of which reflects op- < *okW- -- something one would NEVER suspect if one did not possess a little "specialised knowledge" about Greek). [Hey, Andrei, here's another nice example of a rootless word; -ma-t-i was originally a chain of suffixes!]

I'm not a narrow-minded specialist. Linguistics was my second career choice. I am also a lapsed electronics engineer and I remain interested in maths and physics. I am aware of current and emerging views in the natural sciences. There are many people with academic titles who regard themselves as scientists and at the same time believe in things like dowsing, telepathy and astrology. How they reconcile it with their training and knowledge is completely beyond my understanding, but the sad fact that some academics are attracted to pseudoscience does not lend any credence to the latter. It only shows that education may have a very superficial effect on the educated.

"There is no such thing as 'sheer coincidence'" is a useless Jungian mantra. Theories like Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields have not stood up to empirical verification in controlled experiments, as far as I'm aware. By the way, if there were anything in them, we would have to abandon distant comparison altogether, as each regular correspondence could be attributed to morphogenetic resonance, synchronicity or what not, rather than common origin.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: stefan

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 12:13 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: *dan-

From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> Punkt widzenia zalezy od miejsca siedzenie, nieprawdaz? :-) Yes, you are right that there are many words in all languages which not only look the same but also have the same meaning (English/Persian "bad" is another example, I believe) But having observed that undisputed fact, you then dismiss any further explorations of the phenomen simply because they do not fit into your specialized knowledge. Why is the similarity deceptive if it occurs in a large number of cases? Because it has no "comparative validity" - to which a layman would like to add a rider: "in the present state of knowledge in our relatively very young science". Further on you again use the term "sheer coincidence". Now, there are some very interesting views about "sheer coincidences" known also as synchronicities. Carl G Jung was exploring the subject towards the end of his life and his pupils continued his work. I used to belong to a discussion list called "synchronicity" where physicists, psychologists, engineers and academics from many disciplines debated this very subject. The emerging view is today that synchronicities are "states" in the never-ending "dance" of probabilities. In other words, there is no such thing as "sheer coincidence". Please do not regard my observations as a criticism of your views - far from it. I am merely trying to draw your attention to the validity of other views which may lie outside your specialized knowledge and yet have some releavnce to its conclusions. Pozdrowienia Stefan