[KS] NYTimes.com Article: Writing as a Block for Asians

Jens Plonka Jens_Plonka at gmx.net
Fri May 9 10:02:14 EDT 2003


I’d like to contribute to the current discussion on linguistic
relativity by making three points:

Firstly, in order to put forward very broad and far-reaching hypotheses such
as the one advocated by Mr. Hannas  (‘the writing systems of China,
Japan and Korea sre to blame for what East Asia's failure to make significant
scientific and technological breakthroughs compared to Western
nations’), one needs to be an expert in several fields.
Even if Mr. Hannas is fluent in a multitude of languages, it doesn’t
make him an expert linguist or natural scientist. Neither does it make him a
good historian of science. And you would need to be an expert in all these
fields in order to be able to say that Chinese Characters or the Chinese
language itself influences thinking in such a way that it hampers scientific
progress.

Secondly, the Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis or however you want to call the idea of
linguistic relativity seems to raise it’s head regularly since being
formulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), often with differences
in scope. One wording: 'every language is a vast pattern-system, different
from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which
the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or
neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and
builds the house of his consciousness' (Whorf 1956).

The problem with this idea is that it is virtually impossible to falsify,
and thus not a scientific thesis but rather a question of belief: In order to
really disprove the hypothesis, you need to rule out other influences than
language. Thus you would need two identical groups that only differ in language
use ( and not for example culturally); additionally, that difference  in
language use has to affect cognition in a testable way.
Even with research being conducted with families with deaf and hearing
children, scientifically it is still a very soft thesis and no sound base for such
sweeping assumptions as Mr. Hannas is making.

Thirdly, the idea that Chinese science was hampered by the Chinese Language
or Chinese Characters is old as well (Meiji-Japan reformers were having the
same doubts about their own language…)and just as dubious as the
Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis: I’d just like to point out, that 
–	at least up to 1300, science in China was more advanced in most
fields than in Europea at that time. According to Mr. Hannas thesis, China should
never gotten anywhere scientifically.
–	many cultures that do use alphabets experience time with little
scientific output.
-	‘Western’ critique of the scientific achievements of
non-western societies often shifts its viewpoint: at one point, the perceived lack of
abstract thinking is emphasized, at another point, the abstractness is the
main focus of critique. Whilst Mr. Hannas and others obviously believe that it
is abstract thought shaping science, natural scientists of today would value 
experiments, numbers and ‘hard’ facts in general over
speculative theories. 

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