From: Christofer Bullsmith (c_bullsmith@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 22:50:17 MDT
>From: Phil Osborn <philosborn2001@yahoo.com>
>pointed out that the Japanese did not have a word for
>a scientific dispute - for any dispute that was not a
>fight, a power contest. They had to invent one
Just wondering if you have a reference and/or some evidence for this.
While there are certainly many words in Japanese for 'dispute' in the sense
of challenge/fight/contest power, there are also plenty of terms for
'dispute' in the sense of disagree/discuss/argue over/debate, which don't
necessarily carry the same overtones of power contest -- less
'winning'/'losing' than 'concluding with/without agreement'. Try gironn
[suru], or ronngi [suru] as kanji compound words -- ronnjiru as a standard
Japanese verb [議論する、論議する、論じる]. The first two are written with
the kanji for 'consultation/expressing opinion' plus that for
'argument/theory/essay'. Nothing to do with swordplay at all.
Translating 'scientific' is no particular problem -- gironn etc already
suggest a certain formal or methodological aspect to the dispute, but the
'scientific' can be made explicit quite naturally with the modifier
'kagakutekina' [科学的な]. So it looks to me as if Japanese _does_ have a
term for scientific dispute. Not one you hear every day on the train, but I
don't think anyone would blink at it.
Of course, using these terms doesn't mean I know their history. I suppose
they could have been coined in response to contact with the West (though not
strictly borrowed from the West, being kanji compounds), along with (for
example) 'tetsugaku' [哲学], (Western-style) philosophy. If so, I'd be
interested to know the when and wherefore.
>borrowed from the West. The concept was totally alien
>to them, and they were perhaps the closest to the West
>in philosophy.
You think? I think the tendency to mysticism over here was just as
pronounced as it was in China, and strongly opposed to the analytical
tradition, at least, in Western philosophy. When significant intellectual
contact was made, they took fairly enthusiastically to some of the romantic
epistemology and heavy-duty rationalism, I think, but being apt to produce
long discussions of what 'nothing' is and the odd critique of Nietzsche
hardly constitutes being 'close to the West in philosophy'. Pretty much
everything else over here qualifies more as literature, literary criticism,
or religion, and in ways that puts it far from anything taken as
philosophical in the West. Whether or not Japan counts nonetheless as being
'closest' depends of course on who you count as being part of the Western
tradition rather than close to it.
________________________________________________
CHRISTOFER BULLSMITH cb75@docomo.ne.jp
'Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis'
〒106-0045港区麻布十番2-3-5羽田ハウス401
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