Unspeakable Originality

This paper discusses innovation and notation for interdisciplinary research. The diversity of writing systems, and the existence of specialised mono-disciplinary notational systems, invites inquiry into the relationship between what can be said, what can be annotated, and what can be thought, known as linguistic relativism or Whorfianism. Interdisciplinary research crosses mono-disciplinary boundaries and seeks a synergy of methods and approaches that are not usually combined or hybridized. As a result, there are often difficulties in practice using existing notation to capture its outcomes and concepts owing to their originality. We examined Wittgenstein’s later works that explore the possibility that both our form of life and our practices, including language and notation, can make us blind to alternative ways of understanding. In his manuscripts he addresses so-called “aspect-blindness” by using novel notation and images to show that some concepts exist only as “writing” and not as speech. We therefore recommend that interdisciplinary projects include a work package focussing on data representation and graphical communication.