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.
We rely on metaphor to understand the world. The principle of analogy does indeed go all the way down, as it were. Take the example of negative numbers in mathematics. We don't naturally come by an understanding of these strange (abstract) objects. Can you explain what minus two times minus two means? Negative numbers have been adapted from positive numbers by analogy. Many people need to model the numbers on a line. Then by seeing the positive numbers as going by distance in one direction, the negative numbers can be seen to go in the opposite direction. This helps us with the concept and the consistency of (-2)x(-2) start to make sense. (Attributes of negative numbers may make us think the national debt is troublesome.) Similarly, the square root of a negative number is a difficult concept without analogy. To many this idea is as strange as that of negative numbers was to the ancients. We need a model to give us understanding. We may come to understand these by going off the line into the complex plane. Electrical engineers find these quantities to be very useful in measuring the flow of electricity in certain situations.) What even some mathematicians seem to forget is that these models don't make the things they describe real. They are useful tools to help us understand the real world. Personally I cannot even accept the idea that numbers have a real existence in this ultimate sense. The shadows in Plato's cave are not real in the same sense as are the things that cast those shadows. That would be taking the analogy too far (and falling into Russell's paradox). The phenomena of the real world that we perceive through our senses are not all of one kind, but are all different levels of evidence for existence. Evidence is ever more difficult to establish for the phenomena that can only be detected through the extensions of our senses available in the technological instruments of science. [Here I go again.]
Bruce
>>> Robert Yates <[log in to unmask]> 02/25/08 7:21 AM >>>
Bruce,
I appreciate the reference.
I guess I am still puzzled by your claim after reading it.
Is Darwin's theory of evolution "different" when it is stated in another language?
Is Einstein's special theory of relativity different in English because he originally conceived it in German?
Are the properties of gravity really different in various languages?
Are the principles why airplanes fly different in other languages?
We can go on in this matter with any number of scientific explanations for the world around us.
I think you are claiming they are. I am trying to figure out what that means. The lack of specificity in your claim does not help.
Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>>> "Bruce D. Despain" <[log in to unmask]> 02/25/08 4:51 AM >>>
Robert,
I have written a short essay on this subject, which my comments summarize.
These concepts are based on a study of George Lakoff & Mark Johnson,
Metaphors We Live By (University of Chicago, 1980)[example of "argument is
war"]; John B. Carroll, Language Thought & Reality (MIT, 1956), especially
Benjamin Lee Whorf, Science and Linguistics (cf. p. 207f., 1940)[example of
"I clean it with a ramrod" in Shawnee]; Peter Atkins, Galileo's Finger: The
Ten Great Ideas of Science (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003) [example of "heat" as
"caloric"] and a few other works upon which they are based. The essay is on
my website as support for my present cautious approach to semantics:
http://userpages.burgoyne.com/bdespain/grammar/gramexg.htm
Bruce
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