Today, most scientific articles are published in English. English has effectively become the language of science. Historically, Latin, French and German were the leaders. The common feature among them is that they are all written in the Latin alphabet. Therefore, the written system, rather than the spoken language, might actually be meaningful. Usually, its widespread use in science is attributed to the economic, political, scientific, technological status and colonization of the countries in question. However, it will be a different story as we consider written language as the foundation of science.
In my articles “Language: the core of science” and “Writing systems define their own sciences”, we stated that writing systems are the basis of science and that the sciences of different writing systems differ in quality and ability. . We are now going to study how writing systems differ in potential and strength in construction science. This article addresses basic aspects of strength. It provides a basis for analyzing the scientific strength of different writing systems.
Note that science is based on the textual mind.
The strength of science is determined by the writing system.
First, we must clarify: on what the progress of science should be evaluated. The science is in the text itself. It should not be evaluated by non-texts, nor by incidental discovery, nor by chance, but by the systematic property of the writing system, which makes the human world advance sustainably. The text constrains the scientific mind, not what you think about advanced science that the texts should represent, but the texts support and limit the advancement of science. That is why the achievements of scientists are judged by their publications, which explain not only what they have discovered, but also the relationships to existing work. That is, the discovery is based on existing texts.
Second, the texts are objective and not altered by individual will and desire. The readability of a writing system has fundamentally affected its ability to establish science, regardless of a person’s intent and effort. This is also a more basic level than the disciplines and branches. The visual characteristics of texts constrain a person’s mind to organize and process them. That is an objective factor. Individuals may possess different levels of word processing ability. That is a subjective factor. The objective factor affects everyone who uses the system. For the same person, the readable system is easier to process. Therefore, the visual characteristic of texts determines the scientific strength of a writing system.
Let’s focus on the visual characteristic of texts and reading. A page of text contains two dimensions of symbols. The layout of a page may be identical for various writing systems. The forms of the symbols are the basic difference between the writing systems. In one case, our eyes focus on one or a few words, a short sequence of symbols, which engage in intensive textual thinking. Our research focuses on the visual characteristic of the symbols and their sequence.
aspects of strength
During reading, texts are taken into the eyes sequentially, currently mainly in left-to-right, right-to-left, or top-to-bottom directions. The symbols connect sequentially to build a sentence and more. Sequential reading ability determines the scientific soundness of a writing system. The following aspects are the basis for assessing fitness[1].
1.sequentiality
Previously we had discussed that vertical reading restricts the expansion of texts, while horizontal reading facilitates sequential expansion of texts. Due to horizontal reading, the number of symbols of the alphabets is reduced to tens. Symbol simplification is good for sequential expansion when adjacent letters are combined to form words. In contrast, complex symbols (characters) do not form natural connections. Instead, they are made up of internal components.
The complexity of the symbols can be examined during the reading. In complex symbols, such as Chinese characters, you often need to pay attention to subcharacter components that affect the meaning of the characters. With breaks and pauses to focus on internal components, the read is not truly sequential, because the components within a character are not in sequence in the direction of the read, nor are they in sequence with those in the next character. In genuine sequential reading, there is little subsymbol information; and symbols are easily recognized without pauses or extra attention.
Better sequentiality means better connectivity between symbols, the components of the science we study. Sequentiality underscores the cumulative power of science and cause-result reasoning.
2. Clarity of symbols
The clarity of the symbols leads to the clarity of the sequence of symbols, i.e. words, etc. Symbols should have salient visual features that are easily recognized and remembered, not complex, contain odd shapes, or features too faint to discern, such as a small dot within a large character. The usual composition shapes are round, rectangular, straight, hooked, curved, etc. The symbols must be similar in size and evenly distributed. There should be little information that requires effort to recognize.
Symbols are the building blocks of science. Its clear reading allows our mind to investigate and remember things with certainty.
3.differentiation between symbols.
The distinctions between symbols are important so that the symbols are not confused with others. Good differentiation makes reading easier, because for similarly shaped symbols it takes extra effort to figure out which symbol is being read. The difference must be the shape itself rather than the alteration of the shape itself. For example, “b” and “d” are different shapes. A vertical line and a vertically slanted line are accidentals of the same shape. If they are treated as two separate symbols, they are easily confused with each other. The difference must be in the main part of the symbols. For example, him “me“differ with”me“more than differ with the colon symbol on the cap of”me“. Diacritics and ligatures also make it difficult to differentiate between symbols.
The differentiation between symbols is the basis for the differentiation between words. During research, an individual must distinguish between the things he is studying, distinguish his work from the work of others and exist, without ambiguity.
Four.combination of symbols
Words are usually made up of a sequence of symbols of variable length, separated from each other by spaces. Various symbols can be combined to form subword units. If the symbols are not complex, the eyes usually take some of them as a processing unit, which are usually smaller than a word. This shows that texts are built from smaller units to larger units within a fixation. Multi-syllable words are good examples, as they have syllables as subword units. To improve readability, subword units should have features that distinguish them from each other. For example, a subword unit symbol may have a special shape that serves as a marker for symbols as a unit.
A word is the basic unit of meaning, rather than visual processing. Clarity and distinctness of subword units are important for word recognition and formation, vocabulary expansion, word correlation, and division of meaning. That certainly facilitates the investigation.
5.Other aspects: sentences, punctuation, page layout, etc.
Words are arranged to form sentences, paragraphs, and pages. Markers of larger portions of text include capitalization of the first letter of a sentence, punctuation, wider space between paragraphs, bold fonts in subheadings, table of contents, titles, etc. These features are common to many alphabetic systems. Non-alphabetic systems may also have similar treatments. These aspects are important to build texts larger than words and help interpretation. But they are not as basic as the previous four. And it is easier for a system to adapt to those of other systems, because these are at a relatively macro level of thought (less detailed). Adaptation does not need to alter the forms of symbols or words, which are deeply embedded in people’s minds.
With the help of these bookmarks and features, scientific details are wrapped up in articles, theses, and books. They help build properties such as hierarchy, order, emphasis, grouping, and summary.
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These aspects are basic to assess the degree of analyticity, precision and establishment. The science of suboptimal systems is imprecise, ambiguous, and susceptible to alteration. His sciences are prone to processing errors. Everyday conversation may seem easy to express for all systems, but for advanced scientific material in hundreds of books, rigorous grammar and complex vocabulary must be supported by a readable system.
conclusion
The wonderful world we live in is powered by science and technology, which is based on writing systems. The basic distinctions between the writing systems are aspects such as the sequentiality, the visual characteristic of the symbols and their combinations. Different writing systems vary in these respects, leading to their different degree of strength in the foundation of science. That would also lead to different levels of advancement of societies.
[1] See the first three properties listed in my “language: the core of science” article, namely sequence, clarity, compactness, and simplicity, which are the most basic properties. determine these latter properties.