Models of Knowing and Speaking

Abstract

Busa begins this paper by delivering a series of reflections on how “knowing” can be conceptualized as a network of models, the theme of the conference at which he delivered this paper. He argues that knowing should not be examined in isolation from speaking, for knowing and speaking are found on opposite points of the same continuum. Also, “the expression of man” has a direct relationship with humankind yet cannot exist independently of it and, as such, speaking and knowing can be described as models. To explore the nature of the reciprocity that exists between model and modeller, he invokes the computer program. A program does not contain its programmer but it cannot exist without a programmer and every program bridges two “opposite realities” of “programmer and source program, program and target program”. Busa goes on to argue that models of human knowledge can be found on two levels, knowledge that speaks and knowledge that wishes to speak. After examining these models further, he reflects on topics pertinent to them, such as the concept of knowledge itself. In the latter part of the article (and without contextualizing his work with regard to such models) he turns to describe the application areas that his philosophical and lexicological interests were giving rise to: “I am trying to find out if in the vocabulary there is a lexicological variant between the words that recur with regard to any argument and those that are specific to specific arguments”. He also reports some of the findings of the lexico-statistical analysis of the vocabulary of the Index Thomisticus, which would be published more than a decade later (Busa 1994). This article draws attention to the way that Busa’s writings sometimes sat outside formal academic discourse. For example, though he seems to draw on the writings of scholars in areas like linguistics and semiotics to build his arguments he neither acknowledges them nor cites their work.