Nonsense

From ArticleWorld

Nonsense is in few words the lack of meaning of human language or other symbolic system.

Description

One of the main problems concerning this concept is discernment, in other order, distinguishing meaning from nonsense. This problem is very important in cryptography; cryptanalysts found algorithms to establish whether a given text is a nonsense or not by analyzing the presence of repetitions and redundancy in a text. Extremely hard for a cryptograph is to analyze the presence or absence of meaning in a given text in which the level of redundancy and repetitions is higher than the one found in natural languages (e.g. the text of the Voynich manuscript). Some created text that carries no meaning (using the Markov technique for e.g.), sometimes being put in the service of surrealistic jokes. The Markov technique - mentioned above - is a method used to generate texts by algorithm that seem meaningful.

Other types of nonsense

It also exists an other category of nonsense and that is literary nonsense. The philosopher Noam Chomsky analyzed next sentence as an example of literary nonsense: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” - taken separately all the words are meaningful, yet their association is meaningless. And still, human will attempts to give meaning even to the most meaningless concepts. Is this the way metaphor appeared? Nonsense verse represents a long tradition; lines of nonsense appear in refrains of folksongs. There also exist many nonsense riddles and knock-knock jokes. In the field of Art, the Dada movement (part of Avant-gardism) created the nonsense art as a reaction of disaffection with a society addicted to the madness of war. In Dada art everything is written randomly. It is a controversial form of art, considered by some a nonart, an art for madmen. Last but not least, it is analyzed the philosophical “sense” of nonsense. Nonsense” acting” as sense enter in the pseudoscience or pseudophilosophy debating area. What is pseudophilosophy? It really exists and it is the name given by language philosophers to metaphysics. The first writing of metaphysics belongs to Aristotle and he describe it as the study of “Being” or of the ultimate cause of the existent order.