SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016
New Bliss Ideograms
Living languages evolve
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: CHARLES K. BLISS, SEMANTOGRAPHY, BLISSMBOLICS, LOGICAL LANGUAGE
TUCSON (A-P) — Bliss' lifework was an endeavor to lay the foundations for an ideographic language and sell it, or at least the idea, to the world, and money was merely a limitation, not a goal. His endeavor lives on as he hasn't succeed yet. FoBliss (Friends of Bliss) will carry on. If the idea is junk, reason and evidence fails to inform us (yet). If Noam Chomsky, or another friend, thinks we are wrong, endeavor to enlighten us. Publish a cogent critique and we'll add a link here. Until corrected, we'll evolve Bliss.
Bliss never published a Bliss Dictionary. Without names in Blisscript, Blissgraphs can't be alphabetized. Natural languages are logo centric and cannot be mapped near word for word into Bliss. One natural language into another, more or less, but with Bliss any mapping would be on the less side. Bliss grammar differs and synonyms are few. Waxing eloquent, more eloquent than thou, is not a Bliss imperative. Communicating meaning is. So asking, "What is the Bliss word for_________?" is not always appropriate.
Natural languages evolve with help from wordsmiths and their wordsmithing. With Bliss, help is needed from ideosmiths and ideosmithing. New words are a dime a dozen, usually fail to spread, but some do and end up in dictionaries after the fact. Bliss will evolve similarly but with a focus on meaning and one graph per meaning. Five different ways to say 3+5=8 is not valued. New ideograms can be proposed and voted on, or usage can be studied and using is voting. To propose a new Blissgram, show it and mention why it is needed. Bliss is short on synonyms for a reason, so "needed" could imply "because better" and not merely different. "Needed" could also mean new ideographs are needed to fill in the conceptual holes.
Bliss is full of holes and there is much work for ideosmiths to do.
C.K. Bliss was on the chemistry/physics/engineering side of science and used 
as an ideograph for "animal." Literally it says "quadruped" and to a biologist the obvious issue is that the vast number of "animals" are not. Biologists have taxonomy to fall back on. Bliss only needs common names for those "types" deemed worth talking/writing about by the 99%. Still, Bliss needs to be science knowledge friendly as scientists will be main users of it and science literacy needs to be built into Bliss so as to improve our collective grasp of reality. A more general ideograph referring to more than quadrupeds may be considered. So ideosmiths get to work. The current winner is which adds the dot to reference the earliest "animals" such as protists, the single celled ones who gave rise to all metazoans between them and us. Maybe bipeds are supreme, maybe not. Maybe birds are the omega point, but mammals came later and quadrupeds are at least more noticeable. Insects rule, but if protists are the alpha, quadrupeds are a reasonable stand in for evolutionary animal omega. So FoBliss for "animal" is......
The above says, "storytelling animal" in Bliss. It is a compound graph and an example of a "word" that doesn't need to be invented, just defined. The "story" part is "page" "speaking" and is somewhat in deed of interpretation. Literally "page-mouth/speech" and C.K. Bliss pointed out that what human mouths do that is special, of main interest to others, is not eating but speaking, saying things of interest. We are the storytelling animal. So when "mouth" refers to humans, it implies speaking; the act of mouthing for humans is speech. So page speaking is storytelling, whether evidence-based (science, the endeavor to tell the most likely story) or not. Given our weakness for buying into self-accredited human exceptionalism, emphasizing that we are animals is worth doing. The "page" part is elemental and in need of explication. The unit of biological information is DNA. The unit of memetic information is the page. The page could be a clay tablet or what fills a computer screen, but as information is the highest value product of the human endeavor (not Rolex watches or BMWs), we should consider valuing information with a bias towards quality. So what DNA is to life on Earth, PAGE is to the life of Minds. We humans are: as distinct from
the storywriting animal. Only a few write. Most authors, for some reason, will likely leave off the "animal" part, but those endeavoring to think well may leave it.
The world system, aka biosphere, geobiosphere, lithosphere to stratosphere, the world as we Earthlings depend on. The main element starts with 'world' or 
composed of the low line for surface, the outer lithosphere and waterworld bit. The upper line means 'sky' from troposphere to stratosphere. Both are dynamic systems of weather, oceans, and the slower moving crust of the planet. The circle is for 'Sun', our stellar object, but like all of them it is not a thing. Stellar objects, and the Big Bang was the first, are dynamic systems that are the source of all energy. Our Sun has powered most life since cyanobacteria days and the early solarsphere provided the chemicals early life depended on and organisms still reducing chemicals from the crust and core around thermal vents still do depend on left over energy from solar system formation, a form of fossil solar energy. Even nuclear sources go back to supernova, a more distant stellar object in time and space. So the large circle also means energy. Add electromagnetic radiation to specify solar energy 
, but stars shine, so 'sun' implies energy. To specify mechanical energy, you add a wheel: 
. Putting the sun between heaven and earth adds the needed energy to make for a dynamic world system as viewed by systems science, the 
such as we depend on. Therefore: 
