Language And Science

Anyone who thinks that all truths epistemologically involve the scientific method or metaphysically involve the external world and laws of nature has not only jumped into assumptions that sensory perceptions are accurate in the first place, but they have ignored that the laws of logic transcend science--they are true regardless of what scientific laws are true and whether or not the latter changes or ceases to exist.  They have also ignored that something like introspection involves epistemology and metaphysics that science is not relevant to except as a secondary background connection.  What about something like using or creating languages, something far from having the same importance as reason and introspection but that is still useful in everyday life and sometimes even in private thoughts?

There is nothing missing from a person's worldview if they have not thought of how language is something outside the scope of science but have realized that reason is not science and inherently precedes it, but there is actually much to dwell on regarding how language offers yet another example of something that, while there is a philosophical relationship between it and science in a secondary sense, is not devised through scientific observation or understood through reflection on scientific concepts.  What exactly this means and does not mean can be clarified far more easily than some might think.

Which sounds correspond to which physical movements of the tongue, mouth, and throat is indeed a matter of science--even though science reduces down to logical possibility and sensory skepticism as it is (and thus it is only truths that can be established through logical proof and introspection that are knowable).  Correlations between physical events and other physical events, or sometimes between physical events and immaterial phenomena like consciousness, is all that science entails.  However, science has absolutely nothing to do with linguistics on a conceptual and practical level.  Note that linguistics is not about how to use the mouth to speak words, but is instead about linguistic meaning, communication, and assigning words to concepts.

In creating, analyzing, or using a language, no one is empirically studying or reflecting on laws of nature like gravity.  By nature, anything at all other than this kind of observation is not science.  Conceptual reflection, introspection, logical deductions, dwelling on memories, and using language are examples of things that have nothing to do with science in themselves even if someone could apply them to scientific concepts and experiences.  Unless someone erroneously believes that thinking about the social construct of language and choosing words is the same as observing perceived laws of physics, they do not truly believe that language is a matter of science, whether or not they will pretend otherwise in conversation in order to seem consistent with the asinine, self-refuting philosophy of scientism.

Linguistics is just another part of philosophy and human life that only overlaps with science in a very loose sense at the outskirts.  Language is also very plainly something that cannot exist apart from minds because a word is not a logical truth or part of the natural world.  Words must be created for the purpose of interpersonal communication or because of personal intrigue with the nature of language.  In fact, spoken words have no physical substance and thus the immateriality of spoken words (as opposed to the physical ink that forms words on a page) is enough to prove that immaterial things do indeed exist, even if someone does not realize that logic, concepts, consciousness, metaphysical space, and time are likewise nonphysical and thus the immaterial nature of words themselves does not necessarily need to be given great attention (or any at all).

Science is inescapably confined to investigating physical environments and events and how they seem to interact with each other or with consciousness.  It never delivers true certainty about anything more than the immediate consistency of certain ideas with sensory perceptions.  Words are not found in nature, whether or not one's perceptions of the external world correspond to its true appearance and behavior.  Thus, words and their intended meanings and the concepts behind them are not explored by the scientific method.  One certainly can empirically test how changing the sound of one's voice correlates with specific physical changes.  This still has nothing to do with the creation of language as a coherent system of symbols and sounds or with dwelling on which words one uses to refer to particular philosophical concepts.