Among recent developements in the anthropological sciences hardly any have found so much attention and led us to so much controversy as have the views advanced by the late Benjamin Whorf.
The hypothesis offered by Whorf is:
That the commonly held belief that the cognitive prosesses of all human
beings possess a common logical structure which operates prior to and independently
of comunication through language is erroneous. It is Whorf's view that the
linguistic patterns themselves determine what the individual perceives in
this world and how he thinks about it., Since these patterns vary widely,
the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic
systems will result in basically different world views (Fearing, 1954)
We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity which holds that
all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture
of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar...We cut
up and organize the spread and flow of events as we do largely because,
though our mother tongue, we are partes of an agreement to so so, not because
nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to see. (Whorf, 1952,
pg. 21)
For example, in the Indo-European languages substantives, adjectives and
verbs appear as basic grammatic units, a sentence being essentially a combination
of these parts. This scheme of a persisting entity separable from its properties
and active or passive behavoir is fundamental for the catagories of occidental
thinking, from Aristotles catagories of "substance," "attibutes"
and "action" to the antithesis of matter and force, mass and energy
in physics.
Indian languages, such at Nootka or Hopi do not have parts of speech or
separate subject and predicate. Rather they signify an event as a whole.
When we say "a light flashed" or "it ( a dubios hypostatized
entity) flashed." Hopi uses a single term "flash (occured).
It would be important to apply the methods of mathematical logic to such
languages. Can statements in languages like Nootka or Hopi be rendered by
the usual logistic notation, or is the latter a formalization of the structure
of Indo-Europeanh language? It appears that this important subject has not
been investigated.
Indo-European languages emphasize time. The "give and take" between
language and culture leads, according to Whorf, to keeping of diaries, mathematics
stimulated by accounting, to calendars, clocks, chroniology, time as used
in physics; to the historical attitude, interest in the past, archeology,
etc. It is interesting to compare this with Spengler's conception of the
central role of time in the occidental world picture which from a different
viewpoint, comes to the identical conclusion.
However, the -- for us -- self-evident distinction between past, present
and future does not exist in the Hopi language. It makes no distinction
between tenses, but indicates the validity a statement has: fact, memory,
expectations or custom, There is no difference in Hopi between "he
runs" "he is running," "he ran,' all being rendered
by wari "running occur." An expectation is rendered by warinki
("running occur [I] daresay"), which covers "he will, shall,
should, would run." If, however, it is a statement of a general law,
warikngwe ("running occur, characteristically") is appied (La
Barre, 1954, 1954, pp 197). The Hopi " has no general notion or intuition
of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe
proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a prsent, into a past."
(Whorf 1952, p 67) instead of our catagories of space and time. Hopi rather
distinguishes the "manifest," all that which is accessible to
the senses with no distinction between present and past, and the unmanifest"
comprising the future as well as what we call mental. Navaho (cf. kluckhohn
and Leighton, 1951) has little development of tenses; the emphasis is upon
types of activity, and thus it distinguishes durative, perective, usitative,
repetitive, iterative, optative, semifactive, momentaneous, progressive,
transitional, conative, etc., aspects of action.
The difference can be defined that the first concern of English (and Indo-European
language in general) is time, of Hopi -- validity, and of Navaho -- type
of activity (personal communication of Professor Klockhohn)
....
The ingrained mechanistic way of thinking which comes into difficulties
wirh modern scientific developments is a consequence of our specific linguistic
catagories and habits, and Whorf hopes that insight into the diversity of
linguistic systems may contribute to the reevaluation of scientific concepts.