Re: omosessuali e neri sono razze inferiori? elementare Watson!
Inviato da Paxtibi il 30/12/2007 10:40:29
E' una delle facezie preferite dai culturalisti. Distinguerei un elefante da una giraffa anche se non avessi le relative parole per esprimere la differenza. Altrimenti non sarei "limitato dalla mia cultura". Sarei o cieco o ritardato.
Fa sempre piacere vedere tanta sicurezza nelle proprie convinzioni. Peccato che quest'ultima affermazione ti renda automaticamente un razzista: hai appena definito i simpatici Pirahăs brasiliani come deficienti.
In their everyday lives, the Pirahăs appear to have no need for numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like "all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahăs. There is one word, "hói," which does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for example. And they don't even appear to count without language, on their fingers for example, in order to determine how many pieces of meat they have to grill for the villagers, how many days of meat they have left from the anteaters they've hunted or how much they demand from Brazilian traders for their six baskets of Brazil nuts.
The debate amongst linguists about the absence of all numbers in the Pirahă language broke out after Peter Gordon, a psycholinguist at New York's Columbia University, visited the Pirahăs and tested their mathematical abilities. For example, they were asked to repeat patterns created with between one and 10 small batteries. Or they were to remember whether Gordon had placed three or eight nuts in a can.
The results, published in Science magazine, were astonishing. The Pirahăs simply don't get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon says, shows that "a people without terms for numbers doesn't develop the ability to determine exact numbers."
(Living without Numbers or Time)
Fa sempre piacere vedere tanta sicurezza nelle proprie convinzioni. Peccato che quest'ultima affermazione ti renda automaticamente un razzista: hai appena definito i simpatici Pirahăs brasiliani come deficienti.
In their everyday lives, the Pirahăs appear to have no need for numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like "all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahăs. There is one word, "hói," which does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for example. And they don't even appear to count without language, on their fingers for example, in order to determine how many pieces of meat they have to grill for the villagers, how many days of meat they have left from the anteaters they've hunted or how much they demand from Brazilian traders for their six baskets of Brazil nuts.
The debate amongst linguists about the absence of all numbers in the Pirahă language broke out after Peter Gordon, a psycholinguist at New York's Columbia University, visited the Pirahăs and tested their mathematical abilities. For example, they were asked to repeat patterns created with between one and 10 small batteries. Or they were to remember whether Gordon had placed three or eight nuts in a can.
The results, published in Science magazine, were astonishing. The Pirahăs simply don't get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon says, shows that "a people without terms for numbers doesn't develop the ability to determine exact numbers."
(Living without Numbers or Time)
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