Monday, February 4, 2019

Put a sock in it, Wittgenstein, we're talking snark here!

I submit for your perusal the word uffish in the above lines. Lewis Carroll explained it thus: "it (uffish) seemed to suggest a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish."

This is nothing more than a clever plan (hatched, no doubt, in some "scenic" bathing machine) to explain the Origin of Language in the Human Species by means of the Clochetic Rule-of-Three!

Simply put, the learned Mister Carroll was pointing out that whatever we tell one another three times eventually does become true, that is to say, we need look no further for any linguistic First Cause than the simple observation that long ago, certain sounds became words through mere repetition. 

We might even say that sound becomes symbol through repetition, or even better, chaos becomes order through repetition. So much for the Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything in It! Mister Carroll seems to have whittled it all down to a proper size, easily digestible and suitable for the masses.

Of course, there are always certain idle loafers lounging in every philosophical woodpile, hairshirt-wallahs such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, who dismissed the linguistic and logical implications of Carroll’s Clochetic Rule-of-Three by sniffing (in German, no less) that it was as if “someone were to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true.”

To which we reply: What rubbish! Quelle bêtise! Was für ein Quatsch!
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NB. The plethora of doors in the above stanzel are the doors of perception, which, if cleansed, would allow everything to appear to the Snark concealed behind each of ‘em as it truly is — infinite! You do realize, don't you, that to these concealed Snarks, we are the concealed infinity behind their doors?