American physicist, computer scientist and professor of cognitive science
This contrast between language A, which has a blob where language B has none, is what we mean by the phrase “the genius of language A”; it is the special ability of language A to get at certain concepts that no other language gets at as easily — and complementarily, it is also the set of weaknesses that language A has in expressing certain things that, in some other languages, are as easy as falling off a log.
"In the thirty-first year, however, Godel published his paper, which in some ways utterly demolished Hilbert's program. This paper revealed not only that there were irreparable "holes" in the axiomatic system proposed by Russell and Whitehead, but more generally, that no axiomatic system whatsoever could produce all number-theoretical truths, unless it were an inconsistent system! And finally, the hope of proving the consistency of a system such as that presented in P.M. was shown to be vain: if such a proof could be found using only methods inside P.M., then — and this is one of the most mystifying consequences of Godel's work — P.M. itself would be inconsistent!"
If you listened to each voice on its own, you would find that it seemed to make sense all by itself. It could stand alone, and that is the sense in which I meant that it is independent. But you are quite right in pointing out that each of these individually meaningful lines fuses with the others in a highly nonrandom way, to make a graceful totality. The art of writing a beautiful fugue lies precisely in this ability, to manufacture several different lines, each one of which gives the illusion of having been written for its own beauty, and yet which when taken together form a whole, which does not feel forced in any way.
"For an imperfect but vivid concrete analogue to this curious abstract phenomenon, think of what happens when a TV camera is pointed at a TV screen so as to display the screen on itself (and that screen on itself, etc.)- what in GEB I called a "self-engulfing television", and in my later writings I sometimes call a "level-crossing feedback loop."
When and only when such a loop arises in a brain or in any other substrate, is a person-a unique new "I" - brought into being. Moreover, the more self-referentially rich such a loop is, the more conscious is the self to which it gives rise. Yes, shocking though this might sound, consciousness is not an on/off phenomenon, but admits of degrees, grades, shades. Or, to put it more bluntly, there are bigger souls and smaller souls."
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One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over. It might seem, then, that all efforts to explain Zen are complete wastes of time. But that is not the attitude of Zen masters and students. For instance, Zen koans are a central part of Zen study, verbal though they are. Koans are supposed to be "triggers" which, though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one's mind that lead to enlightenment. But in general, the Zen attitude is that words and truth are incompatible, or at least that no words can capture truth.