Towards System: From Computation to the Phenomenon of Language

Abstract

Early cybernetics emphasized control and communication in the animal and the machine. Subsequent understandings of linguistic phenomena in the animal have shown them not to be reducible to purely mechanistic models. The linguistic complementarity, with its possibilities for transcendence, provides such an understanding, indicating relativistic approaches within modern systems theory. Comparisons are made with Bohr´s concept of complementarity for quantum physics, again an area where linguistic objectifications are developing. The linguistic complementarity is taken as a basis for a general concept of language, permitting particularizations like programming languages, formal languages, genetic languages, and natural communication languages.