Re: Dao De Jing [was Re: Promoting Lojban]

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

la lin. cusku di'e

> Sat, 20 Feb 1999, zo Robin Turner(robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR) cusku di'e
> > Well, no one's been put off translating the Dao De Jing into just about every other language, so
> > why should Lojbanists be so humble?!
>
> I know there's a nice translation in English, but it is still far from the
> original one. Even the translation in modern Chinese is weird. :(

Aesthetically I like Gia Fu Feng's best.  Technically, I like for Zheng Manqing's commentary, based on
the Han commentators', which is available in a rather prosaic English translation (I forget who
translated it - one of Zheng's taijiquan students).  The problem is that any translation is influenced
by a particular school of Taoism (in the case of English translations, usually by Tang dynasty
commentators, AFAIK).

> >  Also, as recent postings indicate, ther'es nothing to stop
> > Lojban incorporating different logics, not just the "Greek" style.  If Lojban were simply an
> > attempt to put language into an Aristotelean straightjacket, I for one would never bother to
> > learn it.
>
> I'm afraid that you may be wrong here. Since Lojban is firstly defined to
> test the Sapir-Wholf theory, let's assume it be true first. Since Lojban is
> based in predicate logic, it derives all limitation and implicities of it;
> thus Lojbanists' way of thinking are limited by the logic. And the logic,
> as implied by the word itself, is something invented by Greeks. I know that
> Lojban's endless (:-)) gismu combination can partially solve the problem
> (while adding some ability to be ambiguous at the same time), its structures
> are still fixed. Don't be sad here. It's just that if the Sapir-Wholf is
> right. The arbitrarity of language just cannot get itself out of the
> language.
>

But ...

(1) Predicate logic and its offshoots are a lot more flexible than Aristotelian logic.  I would hope
logicians have got to the point where they aren't just relexicalising Greek!

(2) Lojban is more flexible than predicate logic.

co'o mi'e robin.