From tpeterpark@erols.com Mon Jul 31 13:46:41 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 23181 invoked from network); 31 Jul 2000 20:46:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 31 Jul 2000 20:46:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net) (207.172.4.61) by mta1 with SMTP; 31 Jul 2000 20:46:40 -0000 Received: from 216-164-226-43.s297.tnt5.nyw.ny.dialup.rcn.com ([216.164.226.43] helo=umktgghc) by smtp02.mrf.mail.rcn.net with smtp (Exim 3.15 #2) id 13JMSL-0000sc-00; Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:46:38 -0400 Message-ID: <3985E515.C99@erols.com> Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:44:05 -0400 Reply-To: tpeterpark@erols.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-DH397 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Cc: cbrooks@pilot.infi.net, lojbab@lojban.org, wbrenner@odu.edu, tneill13@aol.com, oldocjk_a@yahoo.com, RAllaire@aol.com, RobertD325@aol.com, gledbet@tfn.net Subject: Technology, industrialism, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and linguistic divergence vs. convergence: Curtis Smith vs. Ernest Gellner Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: "T. Peter Park" 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): <> 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: <> 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: <> 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 Garden City South, LI, NY, USA