Science Demands the Concept of Thing

Abstract

Although language is full of figures of speech that have become somewhat obscure, and words have in some cases come to mean something quite different from what they were originally intended to denote, it is not without value, when one wants to establish the content of a term, to begin by looking into its etymology. The etymology of the word explication ¹ is perfectly clear. The Latin word plica, which became pli [fold] in French, has the same meaning as its derivative, and to explicate is thus more or less the equivalent of to unfold [déplier], with the nuance (sufficiently emphasized by use of the prefix² ex as opposed to de) that it is less a question of making the material flat and smooth than of bringing out and revealing what was hidden in its folds. Bossuet uses the term in this literal sense: “We shall be forced to acknowledge that there is within the seed a secret principle of order and arrangement, since one sees the branches, leaves, flowers and fruits explicate themselves and develop from it with such regularity ....” It is in an already derivative yet still closely related sense that Boileau says of a tragedy that it “takes hold, moves forward and explicates itself.” ³ Moreover, this usage is consistent with the tradition of medieval philosophy, as we see in Nicholas of Cusa, who defines a line as “the explication of a point.” ⁴