There is no perfect language

From The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick:

It was once thought that a perfect language should have an exact one-to-one correspondence between words and their meanings. There should be no ambiguity, no vagueness, no confusion. Our earthly Babel is a falling off from the lost speech of Eden: a catastrophe and a punishment. “I imagine,” writes the novelist Dexter Palmer, “that the entries of the dictionary that lies on the desk in God’s study must have one-to-one correspondences between the words and their definitions, so that when God sends directives to his angels, they are completely free from ambiguity. Each sentence that He speaks or writes must be perfect, and therefore a miracle.” We know better now. With or without God, there is no perfect language.

Leibniz thought that if natural language could not be perfect, at least the calculus could: a language of symbols rigorously assigned. “All human thoughts might be entirely resolvable into a small number of thoughts considered as primitive.” These could then be combined and dissected mechanically, as it were. “Once this had been done, whoever uses such characters would either never make an error, or, at least, would have the possibility of immediately recognizing his mistakes, by using the simplest of tests.” Gödel ended that dream.

On the contrary, the idea of perfection is contrary to the nature of language. Information theory has helped us understand that — or, if you are a pessimist, forced us to understand it.

Metals

From A Dictionary of Symbols by Juan Eduardo Cirlot (translated by Jack Sage):

In astrology they are called ‘terrestrial’ or ‘subterranean planets’, because of the analogous correspondences between the planets and the metals. For this reason astrologers consider that there are only seven metals (influenced by the same number of spheres), which does not mean that mankind during the astrobiological period did not recognize more. As Piobb has pointed out, some engineers have noted that the seven planetary metals make up a series which is applicable to the system of the twelve polygons. But, apart from the theory of correspondences, the metals symbolize cosmic energy in solidified form and, in consequence, the libido. On this basis, Jung has asserted that the base metals are the desires and the lusts of the flesh. Extracting the quintessence from these metals, or transmuting them into higher metals, is equivalent to setting creative energy free from the fetters of the sense world, a process identical with what esoteric tradition and astrology regard as liberation from the ‘planetary influences’. The metals can be grouped within a progressive ‘series’ in which each metal displays its hierarchical superiority over the one preceding it, with gold as the culminating point of the progression. This is why, in certain rites, the neophyte is required to divest himself of his ‘metals’ — coins, keys, trinkets — because they are symbolic of his habits, prejudices and characteristics, etc. We, for our part, however, are inclined to believe that in each particular pairing of planet with metal (as Mars with iron) there is an essential element of the ambitendent, in that its positive quality tends one way and its negative defect tends the other. Molten metal is an alchemic symbol expressing the coniunctio oppositorum (the conjunction of fire and water), related to mercury, Mercury and Plato’s primordial, androgynous being. And at the same time, the solid or ‘closed’ properties of matter emphasize its symbolism as a liberator — hence the connexion with Hermes the psychopomp <...> . The correspondences between the planets and the metals, from inferior to superior, are: Saturn — lead, Jupiter — tin, Mars — iron, Venus — copper, Mercury — mercury, Moon — silver, Sun — gold.

Metals in ancient Egypt

The al of “alchemy” is an Arabic article, but what about the rest of the word? Wikipedia mentions theories favouring Egyptian, Greek or Persian origin of the root. Whatever the etymology, it looks like ancient Egyptians knew quite a lot of chemistry.

This table of Egyptian symbols for the metals (don’t think any of them is in Unicode) misses two or three metals known to ancient Egyptians. According to Hamed A. Ead,

tin was used in the manufacture of bronze, and cobalt has been detected as a coloring agent in certain specimens of glass and glaze. Neither metal occurs naturally in Egypt, and it seems probable that supplies of ore were imported from Persia.

Mercury <...> is stated to have been found in Egyptian tombs of from 1500—1600 B.C.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the terminology used in ancient Egyptian chemical literature sometimes was deliberately misleading:

The use of the trade names for the purpose of concealing the character of the substance used where secrecy seemed desirable was not unknown at that period.

The secret names as the later alchemists used extensively: “blood of the serpent”, “blood of Hephaistos”, “blood of Vesta”, “seed of the lion”, “seed of Hercules”, “bone of the phyasimian”, etc.

The term “blood of the dove” used in the papyrus, von Lippmann has identified from other sources as meaning red lead or sometimes cinnabar.

Chinese element symbols in Unicode

According to Chinese philosophy, there are only five elements:

• Wood 木 (mù)
• Fire 火 (huǒ)
• Earth 土 (tǔ)
• Metal 金 (jīn)
• Water 水 (shuǐ)

The union of five elements is known as 五行 (Wǔ xíng). In Chinese Periodic Table, 金 (jīn) on its own means ‘gold’ while all other solid metals consist of two symbols, jīn + something else, for instance 金 + 白 = 鉑 (platinum). The only liquid metal at room temperature, mercury (汞), does not include 金 but has 水 (shuǐ) instead. There are many versions of Chinese Periodic Table on the web but personally I like this interactive one. Bizarrely, Unicode has three flavours for each of Chinese elements: ‘parenthesized’, ‘circled’ and ‘simple’. Again, I am sure that many people will not see these characters correctly.

Character	Name	Unicode	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Meaning
㈫	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH FIRE	U+322B	㈫	㈫	Fire (traditional element) or Tuesday
㊋	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH FIRE	U+328B	㊋	㊋
火	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-706B	U+706B	火	火
㈬	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH WATER	U+322C	㈬	㈬	Water (traditional element) or Wednesday
㊌	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH WATER	U+328C	㊌	㊌
水	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6C34	U+6C34	水	水
㈭	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH WOOD	U+322D	㈭	㈭	Wood (traditional element) or Thursday
㊍	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH WOOD	U+328D	㊍	㊍
木	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6728	U+6728	木	木
㈮	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH METAL	U+322E	㈮	㈮	Metal (traditional element) or gold (element) or Friday
㊎	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH METAL	U+328E	㊎	㊎
金	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-91D1	U+91D1	金	&#91d1;
㈯	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH EARTH	U+322F	㈯	㈯	Earth (traditional element) or Saturday
㊏	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH EARTH	U+328F	㊏	㊏
土	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-571F	U+571F	土	&#571f;

Chemical symbols in Unicode

I was told that the Unicode atom symbol ⚛ (which appeared in my previous post) is not represented correctly in other browsers, or, indeed, other PCs. This is because not all PCs have the fonts installed that can show these characters; or even when the font is there, one has to tell the browser to use it, e.g. <font>⚛</font>. That’s annoying.

Given a number of various symbols present in Unicode, I am surprised how little of them are genuinely related to chemistry, without having any other meaning. In fact, just three. Two of them, ⌬ and ⏣, mean the same and are quite useless — I’d prefer them rotated 90° so one could attach them by “bonds” to something else inline. The third, ⚗, means “chemical term” (in dictionary etc.); the scales, ⚖, even though may appear related to chemistry, really mean “legal term”. See the little table below for these and a few others which may be of some chemical relevance.

Symbol	Name	Unicode	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Meaning
☉	SUN	U+2609	☉	☉	Sun (astrology) or gold (alchemy)
☽	FIRST QUARTER MOON	U+263D	☽	☽	Moon (astrology) or silver (alchemy)
☿	MERCURY	U+263F	☿	☿	Mercury (astrology) or mercury (alchemy)
♀	FEMALE SIGN	U+2640	♀	♀	Venus (astrology) or copper (alchemy)
♁	EARTH	U+2641	♁	♁	Earth (astrology) or antimony (alchemy)
♂	MALE SIGN	U+2642	♂	♂	Mars (astrology) or iron (alchemy)
♃	JUPITER	U+2643	♃	♃	Jupiter (astrology) or tin (alchemy)
♄	SATURN	U+2644	♄	♄	Saturn (astrology) or lead (alchemy)
⌬	BENZENE RING	U+232C	⌬	⌬	Benzene ring (Kekulé structure)
⏣	BENZENE RING WITH CIRCLE	U+23E3	⏣	⏣	Benzene ring (delocalised)
☠	SKULL AND CROSSBONES	U+2620	☠	☠	Poison (chemistry etc.)
☢	RADIOACTIVE SIGN	U+2622	☢	☢	Radioactivity
☣	BIOHAZARD SIGN	U+2623	☣	☣	Biohazard
⚖	SCALES	U+2696	⚖	⚖	Legal term
⚗	ALEMBIC	U+2697	⚗	⚗	Chemical term
⚛	ATOM SYMBOL	U+269B	⚛	⚛	Nuclear installation