Again, I wish I knew what this meant.  A concrete example would be helpful.   

>>> "Bruce D. Despain" <[log in to unmask]> 02/24/08 4:39 PM >>>

 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.  

****

If each language sets up a different disposition toward how we perceive the world and scientists are "forever deceived by the metaphors and designation of the words in language," does that mean that the nature of DNA is really different if the scientist's native language is Hindi or Japanese or Chinese?  

Or, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity can only be really understood in the original German.   

Or, really there is nothing behind Darwin's Theory of Evolution because it is merely made up of a set of metaphors in English. 

I would love to have some concrete examples of how a Chinese (or any other language) speaker really perceives the world around us differently than those of us who speak English.   

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri 

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