Bruce,

Did you just change your position?  I ask this because here is the original passage of yours that I cited and responded to.

Scientists even today want to build their models of the real world, but are forever deceived by the metaphors and actual designations of the words of language.  It was apparently after a great deal of study in aboriginal languages in America that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis came about. I believe this was an additional attempt to maintain the difference between what language tells us and what the instruments of science tell us.  Language sets up our disposition toward how we perceive the world.  

I was reacting to the word "perceive."

Now you write. 

>>> Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> 02/25/08 9:31 AM >>>
Robert,

Darwin's theory is not different, just differently described and explained .  Thank goodness that the special theory of relativity was modelled in mathematicial terms.  This made it much easier to find its ramifications.  Its explanation was elaborated by thought experiments that are as impossible to realize in whatever language they are explained.  Gravity doesn't change, but its conceptuality does.  In some other language it might have to be called "weight-ness" or some such term.  ("Mass" used to be synonymous with "weight.")  Perhaps the culture hasn't thought of weight and only speaks of heavy and light; then it would be "heavy-feeling" or some such term.  The principles upon which technology is based are not different, just described differently.  

***
If you really meant "describe" than I have nothing further to say.  It seems to me that "describe differently" is a different claim than "perceive differently."  

Are you really saying the properties of gravity are different if a language uses the word "gravity" vs another language that uses the word "weightness"?  Can you provide an example of such a conceptual difference?  And, what are the consequences for such a difference in the way scientists construct rockets or understand the solar system?

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand what you are saying with a concrete example.  

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri

  

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