Conveying thought in language

Roman bridges ... big ancient structures, still standing.

Roman engineers taught Roman engineering students how to make these magnificent and long-standing structures. What is it they taught? ... what is it that they conveyed? The science of the day was Aristoteleon. It was not for this that the bridges are still standing. There is not even a concept of "stress" in Roman science, the main force that the dridges have to resist to stay standing. There is no gravity, only stones wishing to return to their natural place.

The "engineering tricks" of the day were better. Certainly some of this was taught. But it was not "understood" like a student understands science, understands what is going on below the surface. Learning the tricks of the engineering trade is more akin to effectively working with a computer as opposed to knowing how a computer actually works. Useful but surface knowledge.

And yet the bridges still stand. Someone who firgured out how to make the first bridges stand for ages was able to pass that knowledge on via instruction, via language and example. He could write the instructions down and later generations could follow them and build bridges for the ages as well. Yet, much of what was written down was scientifically flat out wrong.

But the theory flaws were made up for in other ways ... in the enginerring tricks, in the examples, in the diagrams, in the day-to-day assumptions underlying what the science of the day said about how certain things worked.


The knowledge about how to build such bridges was passed on, and language, flawed language, was a big part of it, but not the whole.