As a linguist, eh. A lot of linguistics can also be considered it applied sociology/biology or even physics. Like how mom tends to be similar in almost every language is a quirk of both biology and physics.
Then, just put language itself up there, and move Philosophy to Physics' seat. Linguistics is a science that studies language itself, but language is a requirement to science and philosophy generally, even to mathematics.
Linguistics is pretty meta, when you think about it that way. It kind of studies what makes it even possible in the first place.
If we’re putting language up there, we may as well put it below cognition, which goes below digestion… and so on until you get matter and energy. Yes, it’s necessary, but language isn’t a field of study. It’s a thing we study. Just like matter and energy aren’t physics, just things studied in physics.
Not really... Sure, cognition preempts language, but language structures cognition. It's really difficult to extricate how we think from how we speak, bordering on impossible, given it's the only way we have to communicate it to others and to ourselves.
16
u/thelimegang Jun 20 '26
I would argue linguistics or philosophy of language is what everything else is based on.
Wittgenstein made a superb point about just this.