CORRELATION BETWEEN SCIENCES AND LANGUAGE

ALPARSLAN AÇIKGENÇ

ABSTRACT

There is a direct correlation between human behaviour and its mental stimulator(s).
Every mental construct is a network of concepts which are in turn linguistic entities.
Therefore, there is a necessary correlation between human conduct and human
language. The intensity of this correlation may vary from lesser degrees in actions that
are not knowledge bound and thus result more from our biological nature to greater
degrees in actions that depend on a mental planning or conception. In our paper we shall
examine one human action that is directly bound with knowledge: scientific activities.
Our examination of this topic shall concentrate on two major issues: one is the nature
of language and the other is the nature of sciences and scientific activities. I believe that
once these two issues are clarified the correlation between sciences and language shall
become transparent. Our conclusion shall concentrate on the idea that sciences depend
on concepts that are developed in human language and then turned into technical terms
in scientific inquiry. This means the less a language is developed the less it will support
a scientific inquiry. Actually since there is a correlation between science and language
this proposition is true for the other way around also. In other words, the less progressed
scientific inquiry the less developed is the language. This result will lead us to conclude
that if Muslims would like to preserve their language they need to pay more attention to
sciences without any distinction thinking that one science is more important than the
other. In the same way if they would like to progress scientifically they need to develop
their languages further.