Subject: Re: Curious about functional programming
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 2000/08/05
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <8mgvar$d4jb5$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Sashank Varma <sashank@vuse.vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
+---------------
| yes.  there's a notion in anthropological linguistics, the "whorfian
| hypothesis." ... the whorfian hypothesis is that language structures
| thought.
+---------------

The version that says "If the language can't express it then you can't
think it" is usually called the "strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", and
is pretty much discredited these days. However, the "weak Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis", that language *affects* how we think & see the world
(without being the *only* thing that affects thought/perception),
is pretty much taken as a given.


-Rob

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