How can we best make sense of the world? There are a number of areas that, taken together, give a useful description of the human condition: the nature of society, how language is essential for its complexity, and further consequences …
In our writing group, there was at one time an ongoing discussion between two members on structure: one plotted out the entire arc before writing; the other jumped into the stream and let the story cut its own course. I …
We humans are a wildly successful species. Why is that? As life developed, it first responded to the world with reflexes, then emotions, then by thinking, but it was the human invention of language that turned thinking into a superpower. …
Why Language is a Superpower and Why That Has Created a Problem Read more »
The entire canon of Western thought, from Aristotelian logic to George Boole (he of boolean arithmetic) to the divide-and-conquer approach of science, invites us to view and categorize the world according to its differences, not its similarities. A table is …
No one could see the color blue until modern times. I’ve always suspected that our language affects how we see the world, and this is a great example.
I’ve always had a secret liking for split infinitives. Today I found a perfect example. Therapists are trained not to tell you exactly what to do, no matter how much I ask. I would much rather see (using brackets to …