"Human language... prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand"
About this Quote
Language, for Lewis Thomas, is less a tool than a beautifully engineered distraction. A scientist’s job is supposed to be the opposite of drift: isolate variables, pin down claims, keep the signal clean. Yet Thomas is pointing to the feature of human speech that makes that job so maddening: language is built to wander. It comes with metaphor, implication, politeness, exaggeration, storytelling - all the social software that helps groups cohere but also keeps pure “matter at hand” forever slipping out of reach.
The ellipsis matters. “Human language...” reads like a paused sigh, as if he’s suppressing a longer complaint: language doesn’t merely fail to be precise; it actively prevents precision. That’s a strong verb. “Prevents” implies interference, not absence. In a lab, a contaminant ruins an experiment; in conversation, language is the contaminant you can’t remove because it’s also the medium.
The subtext is affectionate skepticism. Thomas isn’t just lamenting ambiguity; he’s noticing that our digressions are the point. We don’t talk to transmit data the way instruments do. We talk to negotiate status, soften blows, invite alliance, hide uncertainty, perform certainty. Even when we try to be exact, rhetoric sneaks in: a well-placed analogy can win an argument before evidence arrives.
In the context of late-20th-century science writing, Thomas is also defending humility. The world is messy, and our best sentences can only approximate it. “Sticking to the matter at hand” sounds virtuous until you realize humans rarely agree on what the matter is. Language doesn’t just describe reality; it keeps re-litigating it.
The ellipsis matters. “Human language...” reads like a paused sigh, as if he’s suppressing a longer complaint: language doesn’t merely fail to be precise; it actively prevents precision. That’s a strong verb. “Prevents” implies interference, not absence. In a lab, a contaminant ruins an experiment; in conversation, language is the contaminant you can’t remove because it’s also the medium.
The subtext is affectionate skepticism. Thomas isn’t just lamenting ambiguity; he’s noticing that our digressions are the point. We don’t talk to transmit data the way instruments do. We talk to negotiate status, soften blows, invite alliance, hide uncertainty, perform certainty. Even when we try to be exact, rhetoric sneaks in: a well-placed analogy can win an argument before evidence arrives.
In the context of late-20th-century science writing, Thomas is also defending humility. The world is messy, and our best sentences can only approximate it. “Sticking to the matter at hand” sounds virtuous until you realize humans rarely agree on what the matter is. Language doesn’t just describe reality; it keeps re-litigating it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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