Is the phrase "man is mortal" grammatically correct? [closed]

Or, must it be "Every man is mortal"? How about "Tree is mortal"?

In another sense, "A detailed description of a man", "A detailed description of man" or "A detailed description of Man"?

Man is a mass noun, therefore it cannot be preceded by an indefinite article. Both man and Man are correct.

Therefore,

Man is mortal.

Is correct.

Beware that if you say:

Every man is mortal.

You are still targeting all humanity, but in that case, the word man has its usual meaning of a person, because you are targeting every man = every person. Therefore, you cannot write this:

Every Man is mortal. (= wrong)

Going on.

A detailed description of a man.

This sentence is grammatically correct, but it is a bit awkward. The indefinite article says that you are giving a description of a man in general, a person, a human being, but you are also trying to give a detailed description. Therefore, such a sentence would only work in biology, when giving a description about human body, for example.

On the other hand:

A detailed description of the man.

Sounds a lot better and implies that you are going to describe a concrete person in detail.

Last option you presented,

A detailed description of man.
A detailed description of Man.

Both are correct and for the missing article, they imply that you are going to describe whole humanity, which again, in connection with detailed sounds a bit awkward, because it's very difficult to say what is a detailed description of all humans, but the sentences are grammatically correct.

Several people have said that Man in this context is used as a mass noun, but I disagree. Looking at the wikipedia page on mass nouns, the characteristics of mass nouns include:

• They can be quantified by some and much:

  some water; much water

  some furniture; much furniture

  some trouble; much trouble

  But this does not apply to Man, because you cannot say

  *some Man; *much Man

• They have cumulative reference. That means, very roughly, that if you add or take away a portion of what the noun refers to, then you still have something that you can still use the same noun for: if I take water, and add water to it, then I still have water, whereas if I took a pencil and added a pencil to it, I would no longer have a pencil but pencils:

  • adding water to water gives water

  • adding furniture to furniture leaves furniture (and a messy house)

  • adding trouble to trouble leaves trouble (and a stressful life)

  and similarly one can apply restrictions and end up with the same noun:

  • the water that is in this cup is water

  • the furniture that is in my kitchen is furniture

  • the trouble that I caused by myself is trouble

  This does not apply to Man, because it always refers to the entire of mankind - if one were to say

  The man that lives in Europe is Man

  then (a) the first man is used differently (using the definite article to refer to a typical instance), and (b) the sentence is false, because the final Man is understood to refer to to mankind as a whole.

So... if it's not a mass noun, then what is it? I have to confess I'm not 100% positive of this (and don't have easy access to CGEL to check), but I would say that this a usage similar to using a definite singular to refer to an entire class (The blue whale can grow to up to 30m in length), but turning the noun into a proper noun due to familiarity. This latter explains why, in contrast to that usage, there is no need for a definite article, and also the the common practice of capitalising the first letter. (I guess you could say it is an example of synecdoche.)