Chronic Chronism by Rean Rhyne
Remember those painful years of sensitizing allegedly rational Big Daddies and their allegedly fair institutions and publications to the brutal and brutalizing effects of sexism in language. All but the most unregenerate conservative politicians are now careful to amend the offending patriarchal pronoun. Just about everybody now expects--and rightly so--to heard "his of her." Good for us. As the official scientific-technological hipster for Magellan's Log, I'm here to warn you we ain't seen nothin yet. If theoretical physicists keep on keeping on (as, given the powerful pull of future Nobels, seems likely), the day's not far off when we're going to be in big trouble timewise vis à vis language. Are you aware that the quantum guys (and girls, of course) have now theorized and forumularized themselves (and us, of course) into a picture of reality which is so at odds with language that it is deeply paradoxical (though that weakling word is hardly up to the task of describing what's going on on chalkboards in Mensa-enclaves the world over). Simplifying, this is where we are: 1. An electron, under certain not uncommon conditions, may exist in two places at the same time. Not only that, it doesn't matter how far apart the two places are. Half an inch, half a mile, half a universe, it's all the same to the electron. AND: 2. "One" of these electrons (see, we're already in big language trouble here--there are NOT two electrons; it's the SAME "one") may just as easily exist "today," "yesterday," or "tomorrow." AND: 3. Pinch "one" of the electrons, and the other "one" says, "Ouch!" In other words, both time and space as we presently experience time and space are gross distortions of quantum reality. Space, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. Time, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. This, of course, is not to mention the little problem of "unity" and "separateness" (a.k.a. "self" and "other," i.e., "me" and "you") implied by these two electrons that are actually one but are also sort of two. Even to write about this at the simplest level, one is immediately reduced (as you just saw) to a lot of quotation marks to indicate (nudge-nudge) that things are not quite what they seem. ALL human languages deal with time as linear: past-present-future. Some languages do it one way (with adverbial qualifiers); others do it other ways (verbs have tenses). What happens linguistically if the physicists persist long enough and with such success that their non-spatial/ non-temporal concepts move off the chalkboards, into product development, and finally emerge as previously inconceivable consumer items on the Blue Light Special shelf at K-Mart? How about lo-rez time-travel for $99.95? Guaranteed or double-your-money-back telekinetic transport for $149.95? Visit Athens instantly. Push a button and see Socrates take the poison. View the presently probable moment and mode of your own death. Clearly old-hat stuff in science-fiction. But what of the unimaginable effect on time- and space-based language? Grammarians and lexicographers, you have been warned. Not to mention everybody else. First came the little skirmish about sexism in language. Now comes the apocalyptic battle concerning linguistic chronism. END Illustration: Douglas Huang.
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Just when it
seemed we'd got language under control. . . Well, if not exactly under control, at
least "purified. . ."