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On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Joshua Allen wrote:
> > > In any case, I do not deny that language as a tool can impact
> thought
> > > proficiency, but as I said I believe that this case has been
> *vastly*
> > > overstated. It is by no means the high-order bit.
> >
> > Roman numerals. Arabic numerals. Mathematics.
>
> The fact that mathematics can be performed optionally using roman or
> Arabic numerals proves my point (a Sapir-Whorf style "proof" would
> strive to show that one system makes certain thoughts impossible).
No. _Simple arithmetic_ can be performed (wheezingly, painfully, by the
hair of your teeth) with Roman numerals. Mathematics would be impossibly
painful. And was.
There is a _reason_ the hard (mathematically based) sciences didn't take
off in Europe until _after_ Arabic numerals came into widespread use. They
_couldn't_.
> And my computer calculates faster and more accurately using strings of bit
> patterns; no Roman numerals or Arabic numerals at all.
0 and 1 used in a positional value notation system essentially identical
to the decimal (Arabic numerals) system. You are not helping yourself.
> Maybe you are missing my point -- linguistic determinism says that
> thought is enabled and structured by language; I am arguing that the
> *opposite* is true in the vast majority of cases that matter.
> Language is simply a tool that humans create to assist us in our
> communications and cognition, and like any tool, words are subordinate
> to their master.
Archeologists will tell you that _EVERY_ major historical change has been
the result of new tools (both mental and physical). In in fact that is how
they catalog the history of humanity: The invention of fire, stone tools,
metal tools, agriculture, writing. Those _tools_ fundamentally reshaped
the societies in which they were dicovered and from there the thoughts of
those societies. The view that, somehow, thought 'reigns supreme' over the
tools the thought has to work with is a fallacy. The two interact and
shape each other in deep and fundamental ways. Far from being the
'master', thought is engaged in an ongoing symbiotic dance with its tools.
--
Benjamin Franz
On that of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent.
---Wittgenstein
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