My simple supposition is that words are sometimes inadequate to describe certain ideas.
Take, as an example, the brilliant but simple concept of the Pythagorean Theorem.
It can be expressed in words;
(Familiarly), The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs.It can obviously be expressed as an algebraic equation.
(With better explanation), In any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle).
a2 + b2 = c2But it is most elegantly framed as a geometric expression:
Obviously, the concept can be grasped by any clever mind with a bit of explanation and a bit of drawing. Now consider how much more difficult it would be to explain the idea to someone over the phone.
And now try to imagine how you might describe it to someone who may have been blind from birth.
My point in all of this is that for complex ideas, words quickly run out of steam or carrying capacity for the concept. It is perhaps for this reason that many had high hopes for television as a nascent industry to help promulgate educational concepts. We know what happened to that.
So I draw a parallel to other, even more complex ideas. The attempt to describe these ideas as a logical construction depends on so much common ground being necessary between two parties, that either could well be the teacher and the other the student. One has to know it that well, to even discuss it.
But the comparison I made to Asimov's "Laws" of robotics was that it was futile for someone to try to put into words what words cannot convey ... for the reasons indicated above.