Abstract
NOT many months since a controversy which had been raging for several weeks in the columns of the so-called “leading journal” was suddenly and completely put an end to by a well-known writer in a contemporary calmly and dispassionately pointing out that both disputants had been uttering what was absolute nonsense. “I use the word nonsense,” he went on to say, “not as it is often used as a vague term of disapproval, but with a strict specific meaning, as contradistinguished from sense. All words—all articulate words—must be either sense or nonsense. They are sense if their meaning can be imagined, conceived, represented in some way or other to the mind. They are nonsense if their meaning cannot be imagined, conceived, or represented in any way to the mind. When a man says, ‘I saw six men and two women walking down such a street, dressed in such a way, and heard them talking on such a subject,’ anyone can understand, whether he believes it or not. The speaker is talking sense, whether truly or falsely. If he were to say he saw two crooked straight lines standing in the five corners of a square, you would say he was talking nonsense, that his words were neither true nor false, and that he might as well keep silence, or utter any other unmeaning sounds. The difference between these two examples consists solely in this, that the first assertion can, whereas the last cannot, be pictured to the mind. Each particular word by itself is as clear in the one case as in the other.”
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Zoological Nonsense . Nature 12, 128–129 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012128a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012128a0