Subject: Technology, industrialism, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and linguistic divergence vs. convergence: Curtis Smith vs. Ernest Gellner

From: "T. Peter Park" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:44:05 -0400

ju'i lobypli!

coi i mi du la tipitr park.(=Attention, Lojbanists! Greetings, I'm T.
Peter Park).

As most Lojbanists know, a principal aim of the development of Loglan
and Lojban was to test the validity of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, or
doctrine of linguistic relativity. This hypothesis claims that the
structure of a language conditions the ways in which a speaker of that
language thinks, so that the structures of different languages lead
their speakers to view the world in different ways. Conversely,
deep-seated all-pervasive cultural assumptions and patterns of thought
may reciprocally affect language, even basic patterns of grammar and
syntax.

I recently encountered somewhat opposing quasi-Whorfian reflections on
language, culture, and thought-patterns by two writers with very
different perspectives and concerns. The Mount Holyoke College biologist
Curtis G. Smith speculated about the possible inherent
incomprehensibility and undecipherability of extraterrestrial languages
and messages in his book on the origins of language, *Ancestral voices:
Language and the Evolution of Human Consciousness* (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1985). The late French-Czech-British Cambridge
University philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner (1925-1995)
suggested a possible convergence both of national cultures and of the
basic semantics of various languages under the conditions of modern
industrial in two books analyzing modern nationalism, *Nations and
Nationalism* (Cornell University Press, 1983) and *Encounters with
Nationalism* (Blackwell, 1994, 1995). 

In his *Ancestral Voices* chapter on "Apes and Little Green Men,"
Curtis G. Smith suggested that even if we ever do receive radio signals
from extraterrestrial civilizations, we might never ever be able to
understand or decipher their messages, since their basic modes and
categories of thought might br totally alien to ours, completely
incommensurable with ours. Their languages might express patterns of
thought that we could never ever possibly understand or "crack,"
confronting us with the philosophical problem of whether the rules of
syntax, and perhaps of logic and of mathematics, are fundamental,
unchanging, and the same everywhere. This, as Curtis Smith put it, did
not mean that somewhere on some planet in the universe there is a race
for whom 2+2=5. Rather, he suggested, there might be a world where 2+2=4
does not make any sense, and where some other, unknown, undreamed-of,
indeed inherently unimaginable (to us) relationships between numbers
might make sense. Such an alien mathematics, completely beyond our own
ability to even imagine, might yet be valid, and applicable to the
physical world. An alien intelligent race using their native brand of
alien mathematics could build bridges that did not collapse, plot the
courses of planets, build radio transmitters and telescopes capable of
interstellar communication, and count the number of their appendages. As
Smith put it (*Ancestral Voices*, p. 160):

<<If we cannot hope to converse with other species on earth,
what then of our little green men from Arcturus? This question brings us
back to the philosophical problem of whether the rules of syntax, and
perhaps of logic and of mathematics, are fundamental, unchanging, and
the same everywhere. To raise the question is not to suggest that
somewhere in the universe there is a world where 2+2=5. It asks, rather,
whether there might be a world where 2+2=4 does not make any sense, and
where some other, unknown, undreamed-of relationships between what we
call numbers do make sense. "Unknown, undreamed-of" does not quite get
to the distinction, for I can imagine someone finding a new sort of
numerical operation that, when explained, would make perfectly good
sense to us, though we had never thought of it in the past. Suppose,
however, that the new relationship was not only unimagined, but so
foreign to our way of thinking that it was unimaginable: not just
unknown, but, for our minds, unknowable. Let it be so incompatible with
the ways we think about numbers that our brains could not hold both
kinds of systems. But it could still be valid. An alien but intelligent
race could conceivably use its brand of mathematics to build bridges
that did not collapse, plot the courses of planets, and count the number
of their appendages.>>

I'm not quite sure if Smith would be quite altogether correct.
He may well be quite correct about the "humanities," the art,
literature, and philosophy, of alien races (if we can properly speak of
the "humanities" of super-dolphins, intelligent squids, ultra-smart
insects, thinking plants, scientifically and philosophically curious
virus-clouds like the Martians of Olaf Stapledon's *Last and First
Men*), or sentient, conscious clouds of interstellar dust or gas (like
Fred Hoyle's *Black Cloud*). The art, poetry, religion, philosophy,
ethics, politics, and sexuality of such beings (assuming that they even
have anything we could call art, poetry, religion, philosophy, political
theory, or sex) may well be based on root experiences so alien to ours
as to be forever utterly incomprehensible to us. However, it also seems
to me that any rate capable of building bridges that don't collapse,
airplanes and spaceships that fly, and radio transmitters that reliably
send signals into outer space would unavoidably have to be familiar
with scientific, mathematical, and engineering principles that are
universal and familiar to any race trying to achieve such technological
feats. 

Some physical and engineering laws and constants, I do believe, are
universal and absolutely inescapable to any race scientifically and
technologically advanced enough to build certain gadgets. The
inverse-square law of energy propagation, the periodic table of chemical
elements, and pi (3.1415926535897932384624...) as a ratio that occurs
over and over again in the study of Euclidean-geometric circles and
spheres, are, I believe, truly universal, unavoidable, and inescapable
in this sense. Any race capable of building spaceships and radio
telescopes, I think, MUST be familiar with them. I suspect that while we
might never be able to make head or tail of the philosophy, poetry,
religion, or political theory (if they have any such things) of an alien
civilization, nor they of ours, yet we and they might still be able to
prove to each other that we both know the atomic weights of oxygen,
carbon, sulfur, and iron, and the spectral emission lines of cesium,
rubidium, dysprosium, and gadolinium. Likewise, our own grandchildren
and our "friends" on Alpha Centauri A III, Barnard I, Tau Ceti II, or
Zeta Reticuli B IV might still be capable of comparing each other's
radio telescope wiring diagrams and suspension bridge blueprints to
their hearts' content, even if we could understand absolutely nothing of
each other's activities or musings in more abstract, spiritual, or
emotional domains.

This, I think, is somewhat analogous to Ernest Gellner's suggestion
about the linguistic convergence of Earthly industrial societies in
*Nations and Nationalism* (1983)and in *Encounters with Nationalism*
(1994). Gellner suggested that the objective conditions of modern
industrialism and technology might create a kind of world-wide cultural
and linguistic standardization that would reduce the Whorfian semantic
differences between languages and hopefully also lead to an eventual
toning-down of nationalistic hostilities and rivalries. In *Encounters
with Nationalism* (Oxford UK & Cambridge MA:Blackwell, 1994, 1995), p.
28, in the climax of a tentative schema of the progressive cultural,
political, and ideological evolution of urbanized post-Enlightenment
nation-states, Gellner wrote:

<<There is a fifth stage, half speculation, half wish-fulfillment, and
perhaps endowed with a small dose of factual support as well. Late
industrialism in some places and in some measure leads to a diminution
of the intensity of ethnic sentiments and hostilities. There is an
element of truth in the Convergence Thesis: advanced industrial
societies, at least when they started from a reasonably similar starting
point, come to resemble each other. Differences between languages become
phonetic rather than semantic: similar concepts are clothed in diverse
sounds, but the concepts do come closer to each other. Generalized
affluence diminishes intensity of hatreds, and gives everybody that much
more to lose in case of violent conflict. These arguments are not
overwhelmingly powerful and certainly cannot be treated as some
guarantee of a harmonious future, but they provide a small measure of
licence for hope.>>

Gellner explored the linguistic aspect of this cultural convergence
hypothesis at greater length in *Nations and Nationalism* (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 116-117:

<<Suppose it *were* indeed the case that the industrial mode of
production uniquely determines the culture of society: the same
technology canalizes people into the same type of activity and the same
kinds of hierarchy, and that the same kind of leisure styles were also
engendered by the existing techniques and the needs of productive life.
Diverse languages might and probably would, of course, survive: but the
social uses to which they were being put, the meanings available in
them, would be much the same in any language within this wider shared
industrial culture.
<<In such a world, a man moving from one language to another might
indeed need to learn a new vocabulary, new words for familiar things and
contexts, and he might also, at worst, have to learn a new grammar, in a
more or less purely linguistic sense; but this would be about the limit
of the adjustment demanded of him. No new thought styles would be
required of him. He could all in all comport himself like a tourist with
a phrase book, confident that all that he needed was to locate the new
phrase for an old and familiar need. The tourist would move from one
area to another, knowing that within each of them human requirements are
bounded by the want of a room, meal, drink, petrol, tourist office, and
a few other things. Likewise, in a world in which the convergence thesis
were wholly valid, inter-linguistic adjustment would be a simple matter
of exchanging one verbal currency for another, within a well-run
international [pp. 116/117] conceptual system in which exchange rates
were fairly stable, fixed, and reliable.>>

In other words, late 20th and early 21st century industrial society
canalizes North Americans, Mexicans, Brazilians, Frenchmen, Germans,
Russians, Arabs, Israelis, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans,
Pakistanis, Indonesians, and Filipinos alike into a common world-wide
culture featuring, for example, such leisure activities and recreational
pursuits as video games, Internet web-surfing, couch-potato video-rental
movie watching, rap music, rock concerts, MTV videos, Internet porn,
Madonna and Michael Jackson videos & concerts, collecting Barbie dolls
and Beanie Babies, family outings to the nearest McDonalds or Taco Bell,
Club Med vacation cruises, Thai and Cuban sex tours, etc., etc. On a
linguistic plane, this leads English, Spanish, French,. German, Russian,
Estonian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Tagalog, etc. to all
converge into a uniform common semantics of "Monsieur, où est le
Burger-King?", "Señor, yo quiero un otro Budweiser, por favor!", "Möchte
ich für diese mit Visa oder mit Mastercard bezahlen, bitte?," "Igor!
Davai mne dva peperoni-pitsy, pozhalusta, i dva klassikalichesky
Kokakoly!," "Anata wa Heineken ga arimasu ka?""Ma tahaksin Tallinnas 
rentida Buickit või Toyotat kas Hertzilt või Aviselt, ja maksta
Mastercardiga kui saan Tartusse!," "Dove sono i terminali d'Alitalia, di
TWA, d'Air-France, e d'El-Al, per favore?" 

Reading Gellner's musings, I reflected that if it is indeed the case
that the industrial mode of production uniquely determines the culture
of society, that the same technology canalizes people into the same type
of activity, the same kinds of hierarchy, and the same leisure-time
pursuits, it might well be equally true that the same technology and the
same industrial mode of production, including the design, building, and
economic support of radio telescopes and starships, would likewise 
canalize people, super-dolphins, intelligent squids, thinking plants,
scientifically curious insect-swarms, and sentient, high-IQ clouds of
viruses (Stapledon) or cosmic dust (Hoyle) alike into many of the same
type of activity and into linguistic structures expressing the
requirements of those activities.

If Ernest Gellner was right in suggesting that late 20th (and early
21st) century international industrialism and consumerism might lead to
a certain world-wide cultural and linguistic homogenizing, I suggest
that the technological requirements of a space-age high-tech
civilization might analogously produce a small amount of minimal
linguistic standardization on an interstellar or intergalactic scale.

---Regards,
T. Peter
<[email-masked]>
Garden City South, LI, NY, USA