Of course tradition has no real merit on its own, but studying the same linguistic tradition is what enables two people to communicate by using language. Unless you manage to complete John Wilkins's project, perhaps, and eliminate the arbitrariness of Wilkins's decisions.

However, in this conversation, we are speaking English, whose words owe their meaning entirely to tradition.

> However, in this conversation, we are speaking English, whose words owe their meaning entirely to tradition.

The meaning of words change over time, so you are wrong, words meaning are not entirely from tradition or else their meaning would not change.

Or if you agree that traditions can change, then what the word meant year 1300 doesn't matter, things has changed since then.

And the word "word" used to mean "to speak", as in make a sound. The word "merit" likely meant "to assign". Current day meaning matters a lot more than what something used to be.