Symbolic language

Translators—As.sernblers, interpreters, and/or compilers that translate symbolic language into machine code. 

The growth of a child, the production of polymers from petroleum, and the digestion of food are all the outcome of chemical reactions, processes by which one or more substances are converted into other substances. This type of process is a chemical change. The starting materials are called the reactants and the substances formed are called the products. The chemicals available in a laboratory are called reagents. In this section, we see how to use the symbolic language of chemistry to describe chemical reactions. 

Marais, R, Jordaan, F. (2000). Are we taking symbolic language for granted Journal of Chemical Education, 77(10), 1355-1357. 

Chemists communicate in a highly elaborated alfabetic [sic] and symbolic language. The chemical nomenclature is a predominant literary language. Only short names are spoken, the official, sometimes very long terms are replaced by trivial names or are uncanonically abbreviated for oral communication. The chemical nomenclature works with a distinct syntax and semantic, but is not suited for textual sentences. Structures are drawn according to specific rules. 

For a discussion of Boehme s guarded attitude towards the use of symbolic language which recalls Luther s prejudice, see Howard H. Brinton, The Mystic Will Based on a Study of the Theology of Jacob Boehme (New York MacmiUan, 1930), 85-91, 100-27. 

The Book of Alchemy teaches its readers how to penetrate the obscure symbolic language of the alchemists. . . understand how alchemical transformation can initiate a profound change of consciousness, claimed by practitioners to bring eventual union with the Divine. . . practice traditional meditations and exercises. . . prepare herbal alchemical elixirs to benefit the body. . . and discover how the alchemists search for purity can become a twenty-first- century model for spiritual development"... 

Given that such programs would be useful, we must next decide which language would be most appropriate for implementation. At least three reasons justify the symbolic language Lisp. 

The symbolic language of chemistry, the expression of chemical phenomena in terms of chemical symbols and mathematical equations, ties the two levels together. Chemical equations describe events at the macro-... 

For this reason, the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan book vouchsafing liberation from the intermediate state between life and re-birth,- which state men call death,- has been couched in symbolical language. It is a book which is sealed with the seven seals of silence,- not because its knowledge would be misunderstood, and, therefore, would tend to mislead and harm those who are unfitted to receive it. But the time has come to break the seals of silence for the human race has come to the juncture where it must decide whether to be content with the subjugation of the material world, or to strive after the conquest of the spiritual world, by subjugating selfish desires and transcending self-imposed limitations. 

The assumption of the Association s apologists was that theory and practice were sharply distinct yet connected in certain significant ways. It was true that the mechanical arts often marched independently of mechanical science. But the best route to true, enduring, and satisfactory practice depended on theory...Theory that was encoded and manipulated via abstract symbols took precedence. Mechanical science, transmissible by symbolic language, and not the mechanical arts, transmitted by personal demonstration, was to be increasingly professed within the Association.17... 

It is good news that cartoons, particularly the subset referred to as technomorphs, have been accepted by the chemical community as a new symbolic language. The result has been the formation of a symbolic link between molecular and ordinary objects, images that appeal to a broader audience (no background in chemistry necessary ), and a new, powerful driving force for ongoing research. 

The papers that follow aided in the construction of a remarkable symbolic language, permitting not only the association of a different symbol (a structural formula) with almost every distinct chemical substance, but also, from the details of the formula, a prediction as to the likely chemical and physical behavior of the substance. The formulas of Kekule, Gouper, van t Hoff and le Bel worked they turned out to be eminently useful. Why they worked, what held atoms together and oriented valence bonds in space, remained a mystery whose unravelling took more than fifty years. The developments of that later period are surveyed in the Epilogue. 

The exercise for this column is to reduce a point on a vector in 3-D space to a point on a vector in 2-D space, then to further reduce the point on a vector in 2-D space to a point on a vector in 1-D space - all the while maintaining as much information as possible. So (x, y, z) is reduced to x, z), which is further reduced to (x). This process can be represented in symbolic language as (x, y, z) -> x, z) (jc). 

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