Sapir Whorf and More
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 6:57 am
I stared at her for a minute. I wasn't quite sure about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis was, but I knew it had to do with the limitations of language and how languages shapes our perception of reality. As wind blew from the north, I jotted down the impressive-sounding words "Sapir Whorf Hypothesis." The girl smiled at me. I vowed to learn more.
As we muse about language, let's start with the words of one of my heroes, visionary physisist Freeman Dyson, who reminds us the humans are a "species of ape that only recently climbed down from the trees." He writes:
"All our understanding of nature is based on human language. And human language is a tool contingent on the particular history of our species. It would be amazing if human language could comprehend aspects of the universe that no human has seen or experienced. If there are minds in the universe larger than ours, it is unlikely that our language could encompass their thinking. It is unlikely that our science could explain their concepts."
....
The argument that language partially shapes the way we perceive reality is an old one that gained accelerating interest in the early 1900s when anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) proposed that language and thoughts are interconnected like threads in a complex braid, and that humans are often restricted by their vocabularies and languages.
Sapir's student Benjamin Whorf, extended this concept of linguistic reality-shaping and believed that different world views are shaped by different languages. He also suggested that what we actually think is determined to a large extent by our language. However, I don't think Whorf would have said all our thoughts are confined to language. For example, you can imagine the visual, olfactory, or aural aspects of an object without resorting to language. You can imagine the face of Brittany Spears, the sound of the Beatles, the shape of Saturn, or the smell of roses without words. Even Albert Einstein didn't resort to words when he thought about the material universe. He wrote in his autobiographical notes that he often thought in terms of images, and that verbal thinking sometimes occurred at the end of a nonverbal progression. "I rarely think in words at all," he said. "A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards." Of course, in order to communicate his ideas to others, Einstein had to render his nonverbal thoughts as language. I wish that Whorf could have interviewed Einstein about Einstein's nonverbal thinking.
...
Joumana Medlej, launching from Sapir Whorf's Ideas, explains that the Hopi considers units of time like pearls in a necklace: "Instead of minutes ticking away, picture the minutes being strung so that every 'present moment' is a string of all the minutes that have passed already." Whorf believed that the Hopi language (and hence the culture and thought processes) would potentially allow the Hopi to contemplate certain aspects of quantum physics, or Einstein's theories of space-time, better than people speaking European languages.
...
Some of my colleagues frown when I claim that language can shape the architecture of our own thoughts. But after repeating a Baha'i prayer, reading about the word "Grok" in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, or "shibumi" in Trevanian's Shibumi, I perceived the universe in a whole new light, and it's not an exaggeration to say that compact expressions that consolidate a complex set of concepts have changed my life. There are numerous examples of these supramemetic words from literature- karass and granfalloon from Vonnegut are just two others that come to mind. In social structures, the granfalloon is a group of people united or organized by a decree of official hierarchies, a bureaucratic structure. A granfalloon within a corporation may often be constrained and ineffective. On the other hand, the karass are those social networks that actually get work done. Outside a company, the karasss is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable or informal links. I love working in the karass. My own karass of friends forms a hive mind, a group brain that I find immensely useful.
...
Language is like a skin for internal thoughts. The second Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, which we have discussed: language shapes thoughts. The third is that language and thoughts are identical. Here, thought is an internal form of speech. The fourth is that language and thought are interdependent. This is widely the held notion today. Neither language nor thought takes precedence over the other.
Pickover, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves.
As we muse about language, let's start with the words of one of my heroes, visionary physisist Freeman Dyson, who reminds us the humans are a "species of ape that only recently climbed down from the trees." He writes:
"All our understanding of nature is based on human language. And human language is a tool contingent on the particular history of our species. It would be amazing if human language could comprehend aspects of the universe that no human has seen or experienced. If there are minds in the universe larger than ours, it is unlikely that our language could encompass their thinking. It is unlikely that our science could explain their concepts."
....
The argument that language partially shapes the way we perceive reality is an old one that gained accelerating interest in the early 1900s when anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) proposed that language and thoughts are interconnected like threads in a complex braid, and that humans are often restricted by their vocabularies and languages.
Sapir's student Benjamin Whorf, extended this concept of linguistic reality-shaping and believed that different world views are shaped by different languages. He also suggested that what we actually think is determined to a large extent by our language. However, I don't think Whorf would have said all our thoughts are confined to language. For example, you can imagine the visual, olfactory, or aural aspects of an object without resorting to language. You can imagine the face of Brittany Spears, the sound of the Beatles, the shape of Saturn, or the smell of roses without words. Even Albert Einstein didn't resort to words when he thought about the material universe. He wrote in his autobiographical notes that he often thought in terms of images, and that verbal thinking sometimes occurred at the end of a nonverbal progression. "I rarely think in words at all," he said. "A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards." Of course, in order to communicate his ideas to others, Einstein had to render his nonverbal thoughts as language. I wish that Whorf could have interviewed Einstein about Einstein's nonverbal thinking.
...
Joumana Medlej, launching from Sapir Whorf's Ideas, explains that the Hopi considers units of time like pearls in a necklace: "Instead of minutes ticking away, picture the minutes being strung so that every 'present moment' is a string of all the minutes that have passed already." Whorf believed that the Hopi language (and hence the culture and thought processes) would potentially allow the Hopi to contemplate certain aspects of quantum physics, or Einstein's theories of space-time, better than people speaking European languages.
...
Some of my colleagues frown when I claim that language can shape the architecture of our own thoughts. But after repeating a Baha'i prayer, reading about the word "Grok" in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, or "shibumi" in Trevanian's Shibumi, I perceived the universe in a whole new light, and it's not an exaggeration to say that compact expressions that consolidate a complex set of concepts have changed my life. There are numerous examples of these supramemetic words from literature- karass and granfalloon from Vonnegut are just two others that come to mind. In social structures, the granfalloon is a group of people united or organized by a decree of official hierarchies, a bureaucratic structure. A granfalloon within a corporation may often be constrained and ineffective. On the other hand, the karass are those social networks that actually get work done. Outside a company, the karasss is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable or informal links. I love working in the karass. My own karass of friends forms a hive mind, a group brain that I find immensely useful.
...
Language is like a skin for internal thoughts. The second Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, which we have discussed: language shapes thoughts. The third is that language and thoughts are identical. Here, thought is an internal form of speech. The fourth is that language and thought are interdependent. This is widely the held notion today. Neither language nor thought takes precedence over the other.
Pickover, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves.