McWhorter's book The Language Hoax, https://www.amazon.com/Language-Hoax-John-H-McWhorter/dp/0190468890/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BA5K37IW5TDI&dchild=1&keywords=the+language+hoax+why+the+world+looks+the+same+in+any+language&qid=1596907103&sprefix=the+language+hoax%2Caps%2C293&sr=8-1
clearly outlines the case against Whorf-Sapir. The problem — it demolishes a straw man not what Whorf-Sapir actually claimed. Interestingly, McWhorter often uses precisely what Whorf claimed in his arguments against Whorf. When I read the book I spent equal amounts of time laughing and being enraged. davew On Sat, Aug 8, 2020, at 11:00 AM, jon zingale wrote: > When McWhorter came to the Lensic on one of his tours, he made a rhetorically > powerful argument against the Whorfian hypothesis in natural languages. I > now tend to side with him, even though I cannot really remember the > structure of his argument. On the other hand, SteveS makes a great point > regarding translations of programs between languages. Barry's comment also, > for me, rings true. Perhaps, a kernel of the programmer's first language is > to be found in all future writing. Computer languages, unlike Athena, do not > come fully formed from the head. The state of the art continues to be under > radical development and is not just engaged in an empty proliferation of > simulacra. The work of logicians and philosophers, each with a stake in the > development of human thinking itself, continue to help move the art forward. > The ideas of Categorical logicians continue to develop languages like > Haskell, and those (academic) ideas continue to direct and further refine > the development of otherwise sprawling spaghetti monster languages like > javascript (React, for instance). The work of homotopy type theorists > continues to improve our understanding of automatic proof, the reasonability > of mathematical objects, and refinement of philosophically useful notions > like dependent typing (Agda, Coq, Isabelle). The interactions here are rich > and not unidirectional. The ideas being developed are meaningful to the > state-of-the-art and not just more FORTRAN. While it might be true that > Alonzo Church gave us computation, there is still much to be discovered. > > > > -- > Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
