We commonly speak as though a single ‘thing’ could ‘have’ some characteristic. A stone, we say, is ‘hard,’ ‘small,’ ‘heavy,’ ‘yellow,’ ‘dense,’ etc. That is how our language is made: ‘The stone is hard.’ And...

Thirty years ago, we used to ask: Can a computer simulate all processes of logic? The answer was yes, but the question was surely wrong. We should have asked: Can logic simulate all sequences of...

This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially...

It is as if the stuff of which we are made were totally transparent and therefore imperceptible and as if the only appearances of which we can be aware are cracks and planes of fracture...

We are beginning to play with ideas of ecology, and although we immediately trivialize these into commerce or politics, there is at least an impulse still in the human breast to unify and thereby sanctify...