8 ms·
How does our language shape the way we think? (2009)
- robmclarty 13y agoWittgenstein said it best: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world."
- netrus 13y agoDie Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- flyinRyan 13y agoAnd the quote attributed to Einstein ("If you can't explain it to your grandmother, then you don't understand it yourself") also expresses this idea.
- camus 13y agodepends on what you mean by language, people can express themself and communicate different ways without words (music , drawing,art in general...). If you consider music and drawing as a language then there is no limit.
- ExpiredLink 13y agoWhat Wittgenstein means is that you cannot think outside your language. Your language (in its widest sense) both enables and limits your thinking.
- lmm 13y agoCounterexample: Cauchy and Riemann, when pioneering complex analysis. They "proved" many results, but with nonrigorous techniques. When they tried to teach complex analysis to their students, those students applied the same techniques and "proved" absurdities. Cauchy and Riemann really did understand what they were doing - when Weierstrass finally put analysis on a formal footing, every one of their results turned out to be correct. But they were unable to communicate it to their students, because even though they understood it, they couldn't express it in language.
- c-oreills 13y agoAdds weight to the idea of the Blub Paradox: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
- nnq 13y agoYep. And I think this linguistic influence means way more for programming languages than for natural languages - when thinking or communication to a human you can always "escape the language traps" by thinking visually or drawing/sketching or just showing things, but when you "communicate" with a computer your minds is basically "trapped" in the language (the only escape is being able to think the "domain language" instead, like thinking an algorithm in mathematical language or a business problem in business terms).
- serans 13y agoI think you can "escape" a programming language by sketching in quite the same way you can do it for natural languages, if not more easily. After all, we'll been using Flowcharts and the like since the beginning of computing.
- RyanMcGreal 13y agoAnd just when I'd finally flushed Sapir-Whorf out of my system...
- david927 13y agoFrom what I understand, the original Sapir-Whorf thesis (now the strong version) was (correctly) discredited because it was about language limiting and determining thought. The weak version, that it influences the way we think, is now widely accepted.
- aadsam 13y agoWidely accepted is stretching it. There are very few linguists who believe there's enough evidence to support the weak hypothesis.
- vortmeester 13y agoYou could rephrase the weak version to make it undeniable (if banal): the whole point of language is to influence the way others think! If I want to create thoughts in your brain, language is a pretty effective means. (I got this from Stephen Pinker's books.)
- scjr 13y agoCheck out her talk as well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPGpZp1pfQQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPGpZp1pfQQ
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jeltz 13y ago"For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong." I dislike sensationalism. The idea that this can be tested is as old as the modern controversy. There were studies on words for colors in the 1950s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_c...
- robmclarty 13y agoAnd logical studies in the 20s http://tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/ http://tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/
- amouat 13y agoIsn't it one of the themes in "A Clockwork Orange", which was published in 1962? It's admittedly not a scientific text however...
- jeltz 13y agoI have no read A Clockwork orange, but it is one of the main themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four which was published in 1949.
- fernly 13y agoAll of which brings back memories of Loglan[1] which was specifically designed as a tool for testing Sapir-Whorf, although in the end and after many years of painstaking development it was never used for that. Loglan has a successor Lojban[2] which is still a hobby project for a small community. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan [2] http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban
- ancarda 13y agoThere are a few children who are being raised bilingually with Lojban as a mother tongue so the original purpose may end up being fulfilled. It'll be interesting to see how they turn out. xu baupli la .lojban. .i mi nintadni
- franzwong 13y agoNumber system of some Asian languages (e.g. Chinese) is base 10, so the children can learn Maths easier.
- 7rurl 13y agoWhat do you mean? The arabic number system that most of the world uses is base 10. Also, I don't see why the base of the number system would make math any easier or harder.
- c-oreills 13y agoI assume that base 10 makes it easier since we have 10 digits. But, yes, I too missed the grandparent's point.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- taejo 13y agoThe arabic numeral system is base-10, but English numerals are only sort of base 10: consider 2, 10, 12 and 22. In English, these are spoken as "two", "ten", "twelve" and "twenty-two". The words "twelve" and "twenty" are both derived from "two", it's true, but in two different ways. "Teen" and "ten" are similar, but there's nothing about "twenty" that indicates a connection to "ten". In Japanese (IIRC), 2, 10, 12, 22 is spoken "ni, ju, ju-ni, ni-ju-ni": "two, ten, two-tens, two-tens-and-two". It's not that one base is better than another: the idea is that a single consistent base is better than inconsistency.
- scott_s 13y agoThank you. I had flirted with the thoughts before, but never really explicitly considered how odd the English words "eleven", "twelve" and then the "teens" are. Not only is "teen" not quite "ten", we also put it after the ones digit. That is, 19 is "nine-teen", but 91 is "ninety-one".
- 13y ago
- codeulike 13y agoEdge.org presents things as 'conversations' but they are generally just essays, with no possibility for other edge members to leave comments. Thats not a conversation. There's no dialogue, nothing anyone says is challenged. None of these 'great minds' at Edge are actually presented talking to each other. Consequently although Edge.org says its all about conversation and advancing knowledge, I suspect its really just about selling pop-science books. It would be a much better site if it was a proper forum (for the 'great minds' that are members) and we could all watch the discussion, disagreements, flameouts and ragequits. Seriously.
- glenstein 13y agoWell I'm looking at the front page story, "A Conversation with Lee Smolin." It leads with a monologue from Smolin followed by a response from Arnold Trehub, followed by a response from Sean Carroll, followed by an entry from Lee Smolin responding to Carroll's response. Bruce Sterling enters the conversation to express sympathy with ideas Smolin as raised then Trehub comes back with another response and finally Amanda Gefter gives a reply to Smolin. This event is put under the site's conversations section, and a quick perusal of this section reveals tons of similar conversations with multiple contributors all responding to each other, and they've been doing this for years.
- codeulike 13y agoHmm, I looked before and didn't find much, but you're right. Still, on page 1 of the list of 'conversations' there only seem to be 9 that are genuine dialogues, the other 41 are just singular essays or people all answering an open question. But yeah, thats a bit more like it. Still some way to go before it becomes a bubbling forum of discourse though.
- toasterlovin 13y agoI'm just guessing here, but the video for a lot of the "conversations" seem to be a conversation between the subject and the camera person that was edited down to make a more cohesive video. The videos are fairly well transcribed though, so I don't think this comes across in the text. Maybe this is the conversation being referred to.
- diego_moita 13y agoAs a speaker of 3 different languages (English, German and Portuguese/Spanish) I believe that although correct this is a wrong discussion. Yes, languages does influence the way we think, but overall culture does influence a million times more. One example is the democratic debate in English speaking countries compared to the same debate in Portuguese/Spanish countries. I hear a lot of words that don't have a direct translation to a single word: entitlement, pork, accountability, delusion, bullying, patronage, solipsism, ... Because words similar to these don't exist in Spanish/Portuguese I feel that the democratic debate is sometimes so truncated and clunky. Another example might be how any discussion in English is so strongly focused on providing empirical evidence for claims; even today Anglo-Saxon remains the culture of Sir Francis Bacon and the inductive method.
- smackay 13y agoAn additional confounding factor is that a lot of the people who are currently in power in these countries grew up and started their careers under the former dictatorships. Indeed the previous systems of entitlement, bullying and patronage nicely describes the way the political parties work in these countries. It will probably need another two generations or so of democracy before the effects of the dictatorships wear off and the limitations or otherwise of the languages start to be visible.
- rajeevk 13y agoCompletely agree. It is the culture that influences how we think, not the language. I speak English and Hindi. English is my second language and I never feel like speaking/thinking in English makes me different than I do in Hindi. Attributes of many languages are highly influenced by the culture where it is spoken. For example, Japanese may have a word for some concept which English does not have. This is because that concept may not be important in the culture where English is spoken.
- adolfojp 13y agoIn Puerto Rican Spanish we have adopted some of those words and we do have translations for others. But this is due, in part, to our close relationship with the USA. pork (pork barrel) = tocino (barril de tocino) accountability = no direct translation but "responsabilidad" serves the same purpose and "acontabilidad" is slowly entering our lexicon. bullying = no change. We just adopted the word. patronage = padrinaje, apadrinaje solipsism = solipsismo
- dschiptsov 13y agoVery simple - the way you cursing affects how you think. Some cultures are exceptional in using "bad words". Russians, for example, using all the dirty details of a sexual intercourse, while, say, Italians using some blasphemy. Here lies the answer.)
- grownseed 13y agoThis is extremely subjective but as a speaker of two languages (English and French), I find it interesting how certain things come to me in one language and other things in the other. I have friends more or less in the same boat as I am and it's funny to see how we switch languages when expressing different ideas without even thinking about it. Funnily enough, I happen to talk in my sleep on occasions, and I apparently speak a mash-up of both languages, but in a fairly consistent manner (i.e. words will be one language or the other). The brain's a wonderfully intricate thing :)