The Division of Labor amongst Words: Some words, like "cat," "cake" and "limb," do not carry a heavy load of concepts along with them - they mean what they mean, and as such are specific enough to accurately describe natural phenomena. Other words, however, pull their weight: "his," "freedom" and "love" come to mind. These are words that have taken on a heavy burden, that fight for (if I may) the ability to communicate volumes quite briefly. The Specificity of Words and their Value: The problem with these "heavy words" and their application is this: that words lose their specificity - and thus their immediacy, as far as comprehension in concerned - in direct proportion to the increase in their richness of meaning. The more weight a word has to carry naturally makes that word more cumbersome, or what is the same, open to more possibilities of interpretation; such words are inimical in the highest degree to the scientific spirit that has dominated the past hundred years. The Aesthetic Preference for Interpretation: Interestingly, current aesthetic preference tends to place a high value on these more cumbersome words and the opportunity they afford us to make various interpretations. If we want to make an equation of this observation for all the scientific minds out there, it seems that the aesthetic value we place on words increases in direct proportion to the number of possible significations they may have. In a world that is trying to become exclusively scientific - or, which is the same, as specific as possible - it is interesting to note that human beings are placing more and more value on that which is vague. Could we be experiencing the beginning of a backlash against science?
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