21 de agosto de 2016

Max Scheler: Filosofía

Max Scheler



Fue sin duda uno de los pensadores más sobresalientes de la Europa del primer tercio del siglo XX. A su muerte dijo Heidegger de él que era «la potencia filosófica más fuerte en la Alemania de hoy; no, en la Europa actual e incluso en la filosofía del presente en general…». Es muy difícil pensar en gran parte de la Ética, de la Psicología o de la Antropología del siglo XX sin el influjo de Scheler; también en Sociología, en Filosofía de la religión, y hasta en Teología moral las aportaciones de este autor fueron decisivas.

Sin embargo, hay rasgos de la persona y obra de Scheler que suscitan a veces cierta incomodidad. Quizá los más relevantes sean su falta de sistematicidad y lo que podría llamarse su rebeldía. Quien se acerca a sus escritos enseguida advierte que su desbordante genialidad le lleva a saltar de un tema a otro, dejando sin desarrollar algunas tesis o enzarzándose en la discusión de otras. En segundo lugar, resalta su carácter polémico: sea en lo referente a las ideas, lo que le lleva a extremar las posiciones en liza; sea con respecto a la tradición religiosa, sobre todo hacia el final de su vida. Con todo, es innegable que estamos ante uno de los más grandes y decisivos filósofos del siglo XX.

Aquí se expone el pensamiento scheleriano en torno a los dos campos donde su influjo ha sido mayor: la ética de los valores y la antropología. Gracias al método fenomenológico, este autor descubre los objetos que dan sentido al vivir, especialmente al vivir moral: los valores. A continuación se describe nuestra relación con ellos en las diversas esferas psicológicas: la perceptiva, la tendencial y el amor. Todo ello configura el entramado de la vida ética, que se articula en forma personal: la persona trata de formarse según un modelo personal valioso. Y la cuestión de qué sea y cómo se transforma la persona abre el campo de la antropología, donde Scheler muestra muy diversa postura en distintas etapas de su vida.

Obra

1902 fue para Scheler un año decisivo al conocer en Halle a Edmund Husserl. A partir de entonces quedará marcado, muy a su modo, por el método fenomenológico. El mismo Husserl le apoya para que en 1907 se traslade a la Universidad de Múnich; marcha en parte provocada por las dificultades que le creaba el carácter de su esposa. En la capital bávara disfruta de la amistad y la influencia de jóvenes fenomenólogos, en especial de Dietrich von Hildebrand. Pero en 1911 se ve obligado a abandonar Múnich debido a un escándalo promovido por su esposa —con quien rompe definitivamente—, a resultas del cual la Universidad le retiró la venia docendi. Desde ese momento hasta más allá del final de la Gran Guerra, viviendo primero en Gotinga y luego en Berlín, Scheler goza de un periodo de tranquilidad, aun viviendo casi en penuria económica por su apartamiento de la universidad. La ayuda de sus amigos fenomenólogos y su infatigable capacidad de trabajo hacen posible que afloren las intuiciones que barruntaba en su ciudad natal, fructificando en la mayoría de sus mejores y más importantes obras (algunas publicadas sólo póstumamente): 



El resentimiento en la moral (1912), Los ídolos del conocimiento de sí mismo (1912) El formalismo en la ética y ética material de los valores (1913-1916), Rehabilitación de la virtud (1913), Muerte y supervivencia (1911-1914), Sobre el pudor y el sentimiento de vergüenza (1913), Fenomenología y metafísica de la verdad (1912-1914), Ordo amoris (1914-1916), Modelos y jefes (1911-1921), Fenomenología y teoría del conocimiento (1913-1914), La idea del hombre (1914), Esencia y formas de la simpatía (1913-1922), De lo eterno en el hombre (1921), etc. También en ese periodo su vida privada se estabiliza contrayendo matrimonio católico con Märit Furtwängler.

Pasada la guerra, la genialidad y el espíritu católico de Scheler resonaba ya en toda Alemania. Hasta tal punto que Konrad Adenauer, siendo alcalde de Colonia y en su afán por reconstruir esa universidad, le restituye la venia docendi y le llama a ocupar la cátedra de filosofía y sociología, y a dirigir asimismo el reciente Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales. De esta última labor resultó su trabajo Problemas de una Sociología del conocimiento (1926).

Pero la vida en la ciudad renana le deparará un nuevo y profundo cambio, esta vez distanciándose moral e intelectualmente del catolicismo. Por un lado, en 1924 se divorcia de su esposa y contrae matrimonio civil con su alumna María Scheu. Por otro, en 1927 y 1928 ven la luz escritos donde la idea de Dios aparece lejana de la concepción personal del teísmo cristiano. Lo incómodo de su situación en Colonia —donde los creyentes lo consideraban apóstata y los no creyentes cristiano disimulado— le mueve a aceptar una oferta en la Universidad de Frankfurt a. M. Pero al llegar allí, sin comenzar siquiera su docencia, fallece de un repentino ataque cardíaco, el 24 de mayo de 1928. Es enterrado en Colonia, y poco después se publicaría su conferencia El puesto del hombre en el cosmos. Sus proyectos inmediatos se encaminaban a la definición de un sistema de Antropología filosófica y de Metafísica.

Las obras de Scheler están publicadas en 15 volúmenes por las editoriales Francke/Bern y Bouvier/München-Bonn, 1954-1997 (Gesammelte Werke, citadas aquí como GW); las recogemos al final junto con las traducciones al español hoy disponibles.

Objetivo

A la vista de tan agitada vida y rica producción, no es fácil trazar un itinerario que dé cuenta unitaria del pensamiento de Scheler. Más bien ha cundido la impresión (difundida en el mundo hispano por Ortega y Gasset) de que en este autor la agudeza y exuberancia inhiben la sistematicidad y el orden. Pero no faltan estudiosos cuya opinión es más matizada.

El propio Scheler escribía introduciendo El puesto del hombre en el cosmos: «Las cuestiones: ¿qué es el hombre, y cuál es su puesto en el ser? me han ocupado más profundamente que cualquier otra cuestión filosófica desde el primer despertar de mi conciencia filosófica» [GW IX, 9]. Desde luego, da la impresión de que semejante sentencia se halla demasiado imbuida del momento en que la escribe, pero da una pista certera. En efecto, la preocupación más honda y constante que se observa en sus obras es la persona humana, mas no siempre desde su perspectiva metafísica. Durante la mayor parte de su vida, Scheler se ocupó de la persona atendiendo a su vida moral, en concreto a entender unitariamente el vivir de un ser racional y pasional a un tiempo. Lo cual no es de extrañar precisamente en alguien tan inteligente y de una vitalidad desbordante, tal como sus conocidos atestiguan.


En los años del siglo XIX, el filósofo anduvo tanteando soluciones con las doctrinas que el momento le ofrecía: el psicologismo, el neokantismo, el idealismo. Pero ninguna de estas daba cuenta cabal de los hechos que componen la vida humana. Hechos que reclaman referentes objetivos, cuya validez se empeñaba en negar el relativismo entonces imperante y a los que el neokantismo tampoco daba cabida. Scheler, objetivista y realista convencido, veía en estas dos poderosas corrientes los principales objetivos por batir. La salida del estancamiento y el arma decisiva hubieron de venirle de Husserl: «Cuando, en el año 1902, el autor conoció por primera vez personalmente a Husserl en una sociedad que H. Vaihinger había fundado en Halle para los colaboradores de los Kant-Studien, se produjo una conversación filosófica que tuvo como tema el concepto de intuición y de percepción. 

El autor, insatisfecho de la filosofía kantiana, de la que había sido adicto hasta entonces, había llegado a la convicción de que el contenido de lo dado originariamente a nuestra intuición es mucho más rico que aquello que se abarca de ese contenido mediante procesos sensibles, sus derivados genéticos y sus formas de unidad lógicas. Cuando expresó esa opinión ante Husserl y dijo que veía en esa evidencia un nuevo principio fructífero para la construcción de la filosofía teorética, Husserl repuso al punto que él también había propuesto, en su nueva obra sobre lógica de inmediata aparición, una ampliación análoga del concepto de intuición a la llamada “intuición categorial”. De ese momento proviene el vínculo espiritual que en el futuro se dio entre Husserl y el autor y que para el autor ha sido tan sumamente fructífero» [GW VII, 308].

Scheler ve en el nuevo concepto husserliano de intuición el cielo abierto para poder acoger datos vividos a quienes los estrechos esquemas empirista y kantiano tenían cerrado el paso. Los rasgos fundamentales de la idea fenomenológica de intuición —incoada por F. Brentano y desarrollada por Husserl— son dos. En primer lugar, se trata de una intuición eidética, es decir, que tiene por objeto esencias y leyes esenciales, y no sólo hechos contingentes y particulares. De esta suerte, viene a ser un modo de conocimiento esencial, cuya validez es independiente de las variaciones circunstanciales y existenciales. Una intuición tal (y por extensión su contenido) es llamada por esta razón, y sólo por ello, intuición apriórica. No ha de confundirse, entonces, el a priori fenomenológico con el kantiano: éste se refiere al pensar, a las categorías del juzgar; el fenomenológico a lo pensado, a los contenidos esenciales conocidos. Con este instrumento, Scheler comienza a describir lo que llama experiencia fenomenológica. Una experiencia que no se limita —y este es el segundo rasgo de la intuición fenomenológica— a la experiencia cognoscitiva, sino que se extiende también a toda vivencia volitiva y sentimental. Estas regiones, sobre todo la afectiva, son sin duda componentes muy fundamentales que integran la vida humana, aunque resulte difícil su estudio. En este terreno se concibe como continuador de la tradición agustiniana y pascaliana.

Axiología o teoría de los valores

Los objetos que pueblan el mundo en que vivimos poseen cualidades de lo más variadas: formas, tamaños, colores, sonidos, pesos, etc. Pues bien, Scheler sostiene que algunos objetos, la mayoría, poseen también otro tipo peculiar de cualidades: las cualidades de valor. Se trata de unas cualidades que no son naturales, como las enumeradas antes, pero tampoco son propiedades ideales que nos dejen indiferentes, como la inteligibilidad de una ley matemática o la complejidad de una teoría. Lo característico de esas propiedades reside en que nos hacen atractivos o repulsivos, en el sentido más general, los objetos que las ostentan. Son, pues, cualidades no naturales —en expresión de G.E. Moore—, pues lo mismo se presentan en un sabroso alimento como en una acción ejemplar. Y sobre todo, lo distintivo de ellas es teñir los objetos como agradables o desagradables, buenos o malos, amables u odiables; por ellos las cosas provocan y reclaman una respuesta afectiva por parte del sujeto. No, por tanto, una mera respuesta teórica (como un juicio), ni siempre una respuesta práctica o volitiva (porque no siempre lo considerado exige su realización); ante lo que posee esas cualidades vivimos una respuesta sentimental, emotiva, afectiva, un íntimo pronunciarse a favor o en contra. Además, por lo dicho, ese reclamo lo experimentamos como proviniendo de las cosas; son ellas las que portan preferibilidad. Con otras palabras, las cualidades de valor son propiedades intrínsecas.



El término filosófico “valor” no era ciertamente nuevo. En el siglo XIX Lotze y Niezsche, cada cual a su modo, lo habían divulgado, y a principios del XX Meinong y Ehrenfels, discípulos de Brentano, lo afianzaban epistemológicamente. Husserl ya contaba con él como concepto clave en su doctrina ética. Pero corresponde sin duda a Scheler el desarrollo de su papel capital en la fundamentación de la ética en todos sus campos: los bienes, los fines, los deberes, las virtudes, los sentimientos y el carácter o personalidad moral.

Los valores son, según Scheler, cualidades; de hecho la comparación que varias veces ofrece los asemeja a los colores. Los colores hacen a las cosas coloreadas, los valores tornan los objetos buenos (o malos); los colores no existen propiamente sin cuerpos extensos, los valores tampoco sin objeto alguno. Y así como se puede pensar y establecer leyes acerca de los colores con independencia de las cosas coloreadas, igualmente los valores pueden ser objeto de consideración y de teoría con independencia —a priori— de las cosas valiosas o bienes: «Los nombres de los colores no hacen referencia a simples propiedades de las cosas corporales, aun cuando en la concepción natural del mundo los fenómenos de color no suelan ser considerados más correctamente que como medio para distinguir las distintas unidades de cosas corporales. Del mismo modo, los nombres que designan los valores no hacen referencia a meras propiedades de las unidades que están dadas como cosas, y que nosotros llamamos bienes. 

Yo puedo referirme a un rojo como un puro quale extensivo, por ejemplo, como puro color del espectro, sin concebirlo como la cobertura de una superficie corpórea, y ni aun siquiera como algo plano o espacial. Así también valores como agradable, encantador, amable, y también amistoso, distinguido, noble, en principio me son accesibles sin que haya de representármelos como propiedades de cosas o de hombres» [GW II, 35]. De esta suerte, las leyes de los valores (o axiológicas) rigen por la esencia de ellos mismos, sea cual sea la situación fáctica del mundo en cuanto a la existencia de bienes y males (la lealtad, por ejemplo, es siempre un valor positivo aun cuando no se diera ninguna acción leal o nadie la valorase como merece).

La Ética como seguimiento

Según se dijo, la obra mayor de Scheler está dedicada a la ética. También se advirtió que el comienzo y buena parte de ella se ocupa de establecer los fundamentos y de abrirse paso frente a las doctrinas heredadas de la tradición filosófica. De manera que es sólo al final cuando esboza su concepción de la ética propiamente dicha, es decir, como ideal y tarea morales. Para hacer comprensible su propuesta, el fenomenólogo ha de sacar a la luz, además, una nueva idea de persona. Sin embargo, puede describirse el núcleo de su ética con la definición de persona como ordo amoris (dejando para después la exposición más detallada de su antropología).

Pues bien, la médula de la idea scheleriana de la vida moral puede resumirse con las siguientes palabras: «La relación vivida en que está la persona con el contenido de personalidad de prototipo es el seguimiento, fundado en el amor a ese contenido en la formación de su ser moral personal» [GW II, 560]. Los elementos que aparecen en esta formulación constituyen los parámetros de la doctrina ética de Scheler, comprensibles a la luz de lo visto antes. El ideal moral de cada uno estriba en llegar a ser la persona moral ideal, o prototipo axiológico (llamada también, en Ordo amoris, “determinación individual”), a que se descubre destinado; y esa transformación del propio ser moral se lleva a cabo por virtud del amor a dicha persona ideal. Amor que al identificarse con el modo de vivir y actuar de esa persona se llama seguimiento. Dos son las claves de esta doctrina del seguimiento.

Una primera, la tesis según la cual a cada persona corresponde un ideal personal. Si recordamos que la persona es fundamentalmente un ordo amoris, una estructura de preferencias axiológicamente cualificadas, se comprenderá que ese ideal, modelo o prototipo, personal lo defina su autor como sigue: «el prototipo es, si atendemos a su contenido, una consistencia estructurada de valores con la unidad de forma de una persona; una esencia estructurada de valor en forma personal» [GW II, 564]. 

Y de la misma manera que a todo valor pertenece una exigencia o reclamo, un deber-ser ideal, dicha esencia de valor contiene el carácter de deber-ser en relación a aquel a quien corresponde ese modelo: «y, si atendemos al carácter prototípico del contenido, es la unidad de una exigencia de deber-ser fundada en ese contenido» [ibidem]. De esta manera, el sujeto moral ve perfilarse ante sí no sólo los deberes generales comunes a todos los hombres, que según Scheler se engendran de la jerarquía universal de los valores; sino también unos deberes individuales que le atañen y apelan de modo único e intransferible. Lo primero da sentido a la convocatoria ética general; lo segundo a la vocación personal que descubre la conciencia. Por otra parte, como guía en la búsqueda del propio ideal, Scheler propone unos modelos tipo dentro de los cuales, como en el seno de una estructura apriórica de personas axiológicas, pueda darse todo modelo posible. Esos tipos son: el genio, el héroe y el santo.

La segunda clave consiste en el modo como acontece ese proceso de transformación moral. Si la raíz de la persona moral es su ordo amoris —que viene a ser aquella disposición de ánimo que animaba toda acción—, esto es, si la persona consiste en amar de cierta manera, su transformación podrá tener lugar variando esa manera según el modelo ideal. Ahora bien, únicamente podremos percibir (sentir) cómo ama realmente ese ideal de persona si lo vemos encarnado, aun parcialmente, en personas reales. Es decir, análogamente a como es necesaria una cierta base de bienes para intuir valores, es también preciso que nos salgan al paso personas reales en las que intuyamos nuestro peculiar prototipo (o algún aspecto de él). Esas personas se nos aparecen, entonces, como ejemplares prototípicos (en el marco de los tipos aprióricos): «Este cambio y mudanza en la disposición de ánimo se realiza primariamente merced a un cambio de la dirección del amor en el convivir el amor del ejemplar prototípico» [GW II, 566]. A estos ejemplares no se debe tanto imitar externamente cuanto seguir internamente.

Antropología: del personalismo teísta al dualismo panteísta

El pensamiento antropológico de Scheler no fue homogéneo. En concreto, se suelen distinguir dos épocas, cuyo punto de inflexión se sitúa en 1922, donde es clara una variación de posición intelectual y de actitud religiosa. La discusión en torno a las razones de ese cambio, e incluso si se trata de una verdadera mutación o más bien de un desarrollo coherente, permanece aún abierta. Desde luego, no puede negarse la diferencia; por ejemplo en 1926, en el prólogo a la 3ª edición de su Ética (de cuyo contenido sin embargo no se desdice), escribe: «Es bien notorio el hecho de que el autor no sólo ha desarrollado con notable amplitud su punto de vista en ciertas cuestiones supremas de la Metafísica y filosofía de la religión, a partir de la publicación de la segunda edición del presente libro, sino que también ha variado en una cuestión tan esencial como es la Metafísica del ser uno y absoluto, hasta el punto que ya no puede llamarse a sí mismo “teísta”. (…) Por lo demás, las variaciones de las ideas metafísicas del autor no desembocan en variaciones de su filosofía del espíritu ni de los correlatos objetivos de los actos espirituales, sino en variaciones y ampliaciones de su filosofía de la Naturaleza y de su Antropología» [GW II, 17].

http://www.philosophica.info/voces/scheler/Scheler.html

Referencia

Enciclopedia Philosophica on line
http://www.philosophica.info/voces/scheler/Scheler.html

© 2007 Sergio Sánchez-Migallón Granados y Philosophica: Enciclopedia filosófica on line


19 de agosto de 2016

Rodolfo Mondolfo.

Rodolfo Mondolfo.



Rodolfo Mondolfo
(1877/08/20 - 1976/07/15)

Rodolfo Mondolfo
Filósofo de origen italiano. Nació el 20 de agosto de 1877 en Senigallia.


Emigró a Argentina y enseñó en las universidades de Córdoba y Tucumán.
Autor de una obra muy amplia, publicada en italiano y castellano, entre las que se encuentran traducciones, ensayos originales y estudios historiográficos. Uno de los aspectos más interesantes de su obra son los estudios sobre la filosofía antigua, la filosofía del renacimiento y la filosofía marxista.


Según Mondolfo, lo específico de la filosofía es su carácter problemático, no su carácter sistemático. Asimismo, no admite que la historia de la filosofía siga una línea determinada o se ajuste a leyes precisas, sino que posee una estructura necesariamente 'irregular'. Tales ideas han sido aplicadas con evidente provecho a los diferentes estudios históricos de Mondolfo.

Una de sus más significativas contribuciones fue completar la importante historia de la filosofía griega de Edward Zeller, en una notable edición.

Rodolfo Mondolfo falleció el 15 de julio de 1976 en Buenos Aires.

Obras seleccionadas

Feuerbach y Marx. La dialéctica y el concepto de la historia — (1936)
El materialismo histórico — (1940)
El problema del conocimiento desde los presocráticos hasta Aristóteles — (1940)
El pensamiento antiguo. Historia de la filosofía greco-romana — (1942)
Tres filósofos del Renacimiento: Bruno, Galileo, Campanella — (1947)
Ensayos sobre el Renacimiento italiano — (1950)
Figuras e ideas de la filosofía del Renacimiento — (1954)
Marx y marxismo — (1960)
Arte, religión y filosofía de los griegos — (1961)

 "El pensamiento antiguo" de Rodolfo mondolfo

7 de agosto de 2016

Saphir - Worf Hypothesis: Language theories

Saphir - Worf Hypothesis

Edward Sapir

Linguistic relativity

Linguistic relativity, also known as Sapir–Whorf hypothesis or Whorfianism, is a concept-paradigm in linguistics and cognitive science that holds that the structure of a language affects its speakers' cognition or world view. It used to have a strong version that claims that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. The more accepted weak version claims that linguistic categories and usage only influence thoughts and decisions.

Benjamin Whorf

The hypothesis evolved from work by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, which pointed towards the possibility that grammatical differences reflect differences in the way that speakers of different languages perceive the world. Linguistic relativity was formulated as a testable hypothesis called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg, based on experiments on color perception across language groups. Color perception and naming has been a popular research area, producing studies that have both supported and questioned linguistic relativity's validity. In the mid-20th century many linguists and psychologists had maintained that human language and cognition is universal and not subject to relativistic effects.

The hypothesis has influenced disciplines beyond linguistics, including philosophy, neurobiology, anthropology, psychology and sociology. The hypothesis' origin, definition and applicability have been controversial since first outlined. It has come in and out of favor and remains contested as research continues across these domains. Most recently, a common view is that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways, but that other processes are better seen as arising from connectionist factors. Research is focused on exploring new ways to characterize cognition, including the influence of language.[1] Linguistic relativity has influenced works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.

Forms: Linguistic determinism

The strongest form of the theory is linguistic determinism, which holds that language entirely determines the range of cognitive processes. The hypothesis of linguistic determinism is now generally agreed to be false.[2]

Linguistic influence

This is the weaker form, proposing that language provides constraints in some areas of cognition, but that it is by no means determinative. Research on weaker forms have produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.[2]
History

The idea that language and thought are intertwined is ancient. Plato argued against sophist thinkers such as Gorgias of Leontini, who held that the physical world cannot be experienced except through language; this made the question of truth dependent on aesthetic preferences or functional consequences. Plato held instead that the world consisted of eternal ideas and that language should reflect these ideas as accurately as possible.[3] Following Plato, St. Augustine, for example, held the view that language was merely labels applied to already existing concepts. This view remained prevalent throughout the Middle Ages.[4] Roger Bacon held the opinion that language was but a veil covering up eternal truths, hiding them from human experience. For Immanuel Kant, language was but one of several tools used by humans to experience the world.

German Romantic philosophers. Wilhelm von Humboldt

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the idea of the existence of different national characters, or "Volksgeister", of different ethnic groups was the moving force behind the German romantics school and the beginning ideologies of ethnic nationalism.

In 1820, Wilhelm von Humboldt connected the study of language to the national romanticist program by proposing the view that language is the fabric of thought. Thoughts are produced as a kind of internal dialog using the same grammar as the thinker's native language.[5] This view was part of a larger picture in which the world view of an ethnic nation, their "Weltanschauung", was seen as being faithfully reflected in the grammar of their language. Von Humboldt argued that languages with an inflectional morphological type, such as German, English and the other Indo-European languages, were the most perfect languages and that accordingly this explained the dominance of their speakers over the speakers of less perfect languages. Wilhelm von Humboldt declared in 1820:

The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world.[5]

Boas and Sapir: Franz Boas. Edward Sapir

The idea that some languages are superior to others and that lesser languages maintained their speakers in intellectual poverty was widespread in the early 20th century. American linguist William Dwight Whitney, for example, actively strove to eradicate Native American languages, arguing that their speakers were savages and would be better off learning English and adopting a civilized way of life.[6] The first anthropologist and linguist to challenge this view was Franz Boas.[7] While undertaking geographical research in northern Canada he became fascinated with the Inuit people and decided to become an ethnographer. Boas stressed the equal worth of all cultures and languages, that there was no such thing as a primitive language and that all languages were capable of expressing the same content, albeit by widely differing means. Boas saw language as an inseparable part of culture and he was among the first to require of ethnographers to learn the native language of the culture under study and to document verbal culture such as myths and legends in the original language.

Boas:

It does not seem likely [...] that there is any direct relation between the culture of a tribe and the language they speak, except in so far as the form of the language will be moulded by the state of the culture, but not in so far as a certain state of the culture is conditioned by the morphological traits of the language."[8]

Boas' student Edward Sapir reached back to the Humboldtian idea that languages contained the key to understanding the world views of peoples. He espoused the viewpoint that because of the differences in the grammatical systems of languages no two languages were similar enough to allow for perfect cross-translation. Sapir also thought because language represented reality differently, it followed that the speakers of different languages would perceive reality differently.

Sapir:

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.[9]

On the other hand, Sapir explicitly rejected strong linguistic determinism by stating, "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language."[10]

Sapir was explicit that the connections between language and culture were neither thoroughgoing nor particularly deep, if they existed at all:

It is easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. Totally unrelated languages share in one culture; closely related languages—even a single language—belong to distinct culture spheres. There are many excellent examples in Aboriginal America. The Athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that I know of. The speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas... The cultural adaptability of the Athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves.[11]

Sapir offered similar observations about speakers of so-called "world" or "modern" languages, noting, "possession of a common language is still and will continue to be a smoother of the way to a mutual understanding between England and America, but it is very clear that other factors, some of them rapidly cumulative, are working powerfully to counteract this leveling influence. A common language cannot indefinitely set the seal on a common culture when the geographical, physical, and economics determinants of the culture are no longer the same throughout the area."[12]

While Sapir never made a point of studying directly how languages affected thought, some notion of (probably "weak") linguistic relativity underlayed his basic understanding of language, and would be taken up by Whorf.

Drawing on influences such as Humboldt and Friedrich Nietzsche, some European thinkers developed ideas similar to those of Sapir and Whorf, generally working in isolation from each other. Prominent in Germany from the late 1920s through into the 1960s were the strongly relativist theories of Leo Weisgerber and his key concept of a 'linguistic inter-world', mediating between external reality and the forms of a given language, in ways peculiar to that language.[13] Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky read Sapir's work and experimentally studied the ways in which the development of concepts in children was influenced by structures given in language. His 1934 work "Thought and Language"[14] has been compared to Whorf's and taken as mutually supportive evidence of language's influence on cognition.[15] Drawing on Nietzsche's ideas of perspectivism Alfred Korzybski developed the theory of general semantics that has been compared to Whorf's notions of linguistic relativity.[16] Though influential in their own right, this work has not been influential in the debate on linguistic relativity, which has tended to center on the American paradigm exemplified by Sapir and Whorf.

Benjamin Lee Whorf.

More than any other linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf has become associated with what he called the "linguistic relativity principle".[17] Studying Native American languages, he attempted to account for the ways in which grammatical systems and language use differences affected perception. Whorf also examined how a scientific account of the world differed from a religious account, which led him to study the original languages of religious scripture and to write several anti-evolutionist pamphlets.[18] Whorf's opinions regarding the nature of the relation between language and thought remain under contention. Critics such as Lenneberg, Black and Pinker attribute to Whorf a strong linguistic determinism, while Lucy, Silverstein and Levinson point to Whorf's explicit rejections of determinism, and where he contends that translation and commensuration is possible.

Although Whorf lacked an advanced degree in linguistics, his reputation reflects his acquired competence. His peers at Yale University considered the 'amateur' Whorf to be the best man available to take over Sapir's graduate seminar in Native American linguistics while Sapir was on sabbatical in 1937–38.[19] He was highly regarded by authorities such as Boas, Sapir, Bloomfield and Tozzer. Indeed, Lucy wrote, "despite his 'amateur' status, Whorf's work in linguistics was and still is recognized as being of superb professional quality by linguists".[20]

Detractors such as Lenneberg, Chomsky and Pinker criticized him for insufficient clarity in his description of how language influences thought, and for not proving his conjectures. Most of his arguments were in the form of anecdotes and speculations that served as attempts to show how 'exotic' grammatical traits were connected to what were apparently equally exotic worlds of thought. In Whorf's words:

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language [...] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.[21]

Whorf's illustration of the difference between the English and Shawnee gestalt construction of cleaning a gun with a ramrod. From the article "Language and Science", originally published in the MIT Technology Review, 1940. Image copyright of MIT Press.

Among Whorf's best-known examples of linguistic relativity are instances where an indigenous language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in European languages (Whorf used the acronym SAE "Standard Average European" to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of less-studied languages).

One of Whorf's examples was the supposedly large number of words for 'snow' in the Inuit language, an example which later was contested as a misrepresentation.[22]

Another is the Hopi language's words for water, one indicating drinking water in a container and another indicating a natural body of water. These examples of polysemy served the double purpose of showing that indigenous languages sometimes made more fine grained semantic distinctions than European languages and that direct translation between two languages, even of seemingly basic concepts such as snow or water, is not always possible.

Another example from Whorf's experience as a chemical engineer working for an insurance company as a fire inspector.[22] While inspecting a chemical plant he observed that the plant had two storage rooms for gasoline barrels, one for the full barrels and one for the empty ones. He further noticed that while no employees smoked cigarettes in the room for full barrels, no-one minded smoking in the room with empty barrels, although this was potentially much more dangerous because of the highly flammable vapors still in the barrels. He concluded that the use of the word empty in connection to the barrels had led the workers to unconsciously regard them as harmless, although consciously they were probably aware of the risk of explosion. This example was later criticized by Lenneberg[23] as not actually demonstrating causality between the use of the word empty and the action of smoking, but instead was an example of circular reasoning. Pinker in The Language Instinct ridiculed this example, claiming that this was a failing of human insight rather than language.

Whorf's most elaborate argument for linguistic relativity regarded what he believed to be a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi.[18] He argued that in contrast to English and other SAE languages, Hopi does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct, countable instances, like "three days" or "five years," but rather as a single process and that consequently it has no nouns referring to units of time as SAE speakers understand them. He proposed that this view of time was fundamental to Hopi culture and explained certain Hopi behavioral patterns. Malotki later claimed that he had found no evidence of Whorf's claims in 1980's era speakers, nor in historical documents dating back to the arrival of Europeans. Malotki used evidence from archaeological data, calendars, historical documents, modern speech and concluded that there was no evidence that Hopi conceptualize time in the way Whorf suggested. Universalist scholars such as Pinker often see Malotki's study as a final refutation of Whorf's claim about Hopi, whereas relativist scholars such as Lucy and Penny Lee criticized Malotki's study for mischaracterizing Whorf's claims and for forcing Hopi grammar into a model of analysis that doesn't fit the data.[24]

Whorf died in 1941 at age 44, leaving multiple unpublished papers. His line of thought was continued by linguists and anthropologists such as Hoijer and Lee who both continued investigations into the effect of language on habitual thought, and Trager, who prepared a number of Whorf's papers for posthumous publishing. The most important event for the dissemination of Whorf's ideas to a larger public was the publication in 1956 of his major writings on the topic of linguistic relativity in a single volume titled Language, Thought and Reality.

Eric Lenneberg

In 1953 Eric Lenneberg criticised Whorf's examples from an objectivist view of language holding that languages are principally meant to represent events in the real world and that even though languages express these ideas in various ways, the meanings of such expressions and therefore the thoughts of the speaker are equivalent. He argued that Whorf's English descriptions of a Hopi speaker's view of time were in fact translations of the Hopi concept into English, therefore disproving linguistic relativity. However Whorf was concerned with how the habitual use of language influences habitual behavior, rather than translatability. Whorf's point was that while English speakers may be able to understand how a Hopi speaker thinks, they do not think in that way.[25]

Lenneberg's main criticism of Whorf's works was that he never showed the connection between a linguistic phenomenon and a mental phenomenon. With Brown, Lenneberg proposed that proving such a connection required directly matching linguistic phenomena with behavior. They assessed linguistic relativity experimentally and published their findings in 1954.

Since neither Sapir nor Whorf had ever stated a formal hypothesis, Brown and Lenneberg formulated their own. Their two tenets were (i) "the world is differently experienced and conceived in different linguistic communities" and (ii) "language causes a particular cognitive structure".[26] Brown later developed them into the so-called "weak" and "strong" formulation:

* Structural differences between language systems will, in general, be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences, of an unspecified sort, in the native speakers of the language.

  The structure of anyone's native language strongly influences or fully determines the worldview he will acquire as he learns the language.[27]

Brown's formulations became widely known and were retrospectdively attributed to Whorf and Sapir although the second formulation, verging on linguistic determinism, was never advanced by either of them.

Since Brown and Lenneberg believed that the objective reality denoted by language was the same for speakers of all languages, they decided to test how different languages codified the same message differently and whether differences in codification could be proven to affect behavior.

They designed experiments involving the codification of colors. In their first experiment, they investigated whether it was easier for speakers of English to remember color shades for which they had a specific name than to remember colors that were not as easily definable by words. This allowed them to compare the linguistic categorization directly to a non-linguistic task. In a later experiment, speakers of two languages that categorize colors differently (English and Zuni) were asked to recognize colors. In this way, it could be determined whether the differing color categories of the two speakers would determine their ability to recognize nuances within color categories. Brown and Lenneberg found that Zuñi speakers who classify green and blue together as a single color did have trouble recognizing and remembering nuances within the green/blue category.[28] Brown and Lenneberg's study began a tradition of investigation of linguistic relativity through color terminology.

Universalist period

Main articles: Universalism, Universalism and relativism of color terminology, and Relativism of color terminology

Lenneberg was also one of the first cognitive scientists to begin development of the Universalist theory of language that was formulated by Chomsky in the form of Universal Grammar, effectively arguing that all languages share the same underlying structure. The Chomskyan school also holds the belief that linguistic structures are largely innate and that what are perceived as differences between specific languages are surface phenomena that do not affect the brain's universal cognitive processes. This theory became the dominant paradigm in American linguistics from the 1960s through the 1980s, while linguistic relativity became the object of ridicule.[29]

Examples of universalist influence in the 1960s are the studies by Berlin and Kay who continued Lenneberg's color research. They studied color terminology formation and showed clear universal trends in color naming. For example, they found that even though languages have different color terminologies, they generally recognize certain hues as more focal than others. They showed that in languages with few color terms, it is predictable from the number of terms which hues are chosen as focal colors, for example, languages with only three color terms always have the focal colors black, white and red.[30] The fact that what had been believed to be random differences between color naming in different languages could be shown to follow universal patterns was seen as a powerful argument against linguistic relativity.[31] Berlin and Kay's research has since been criticized by relativists such as Lucy, who argued that Berlin and Kay's conclusions were skewed by their insistence that color terms encode only color information.[32] This, Lucy argues, made them blind to the instances in which color terms provided other information that might be considered examples of linguistic relativity.

Other universalist researchers dedicated themselves to dispelling other aspects of linguistic relativity, often attacking Whorf's specific points and examples. For example, Malotki's monumental study of time expressions in Hopi presented many examples that challenged Whorf's "timeless" interpretation of Hopi language and culture.[33]

Today many followers of the universalist school of thought still oppose linguistic relativity. For example, Pinker argues in The Language Instinct that thought is independent of language, that language is itself meaningless in any fundamental way to human thought, and that human beings do not even think in "natural" language, i.e. any language that we actually communicate in; rather, we think in a meta-language, preceding any natural language, called "mentalese." Pinker attacks what he calls "Whorf's radical position," declaring, "the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make."[34]

Pinker and other universalists have been accused by relativists of misrepresenting Whorf's views and arguing against strawmen.[35][32][25]

Joshua Fishman's 'Whorfianism of the third kind'

Joshua Fishman argued that Whorf's true position was largely overlooked. In 1978, he suggested that Whorf was a 'neo-Herderian champion'[36] and in 1982, he proposed 'Whorfianism of the third kind' in an attempt to refocus linguists' attention on what he claimed was Whorf's real interest, namely the intrinsic value of 'little peoples' and 'little languages'.[37] Whorf had criticized Ogden's Basic English thus:

But to restrict thinking to the patterns merely of English […] is to lose a power of thought which, once lost, can never be regained. It is the 'plainest' English which contains the greatest number of unconscious assumptions about nature. […] We handle even our plain English with much greater effect if we direct it from the vantage point of a multilingual awareness.[38]

Where Brown's weak version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis proposes that language influences thought and the strong version that language determines thought, Fishman's 'Whorfianism of the third kind' proposes that language is a key to culture.
Cognitive linguistics

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics renewed interest in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.[39] One of those who adopted a more Whorfian approach was Lakoff. He argued that language is often used metaphorically and that languages use different cultural metaphors that reveal something about how speakers of that language think. For example, English employs conceptual metaphors likening time with money, so that time can be saved and spent and invested, whereas other languages do not talk about time in that way. Other such metaphors are common to many languages because they are based on general human experience, for example, metaphors likening up with good and bad with down. Lakoff also argued that metaphor plays an important part in political debates such as the "right to life" or the "right to choose"; or "illegal aliens" or "undocumented workers".
Parameters

In his book Women, Fire and Dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind,[25] Lakoff reappraised linguistic relativity and especially Whorf's views about how linguistic categorization reflects and/or influences mental categories. He concluded that the debate had been confused. He described four parameters on which researchers differed in their opinions about what constitutes linguistic relativity.

One parameter is the degree and depth of linguistic relativity. Perhaps a few examples of superficial differences in language and associated behavior are enough to demonstrate the existence of linguistic relativity. Alternatively, perhaps only deep differences that permeate the linguistic and cultural system suffice.

A second parameter is whether conceptual systems are absolute or whether they can evolve.

A third parameter is whether the similarity criteria is translatability or the use of linguistic expressions.

A fourth parameter is whether the locus of linguistic relativity is in language or in the brain. Lakoff concluded that many of Whorf's critics had criticized him using novel definitions of linguistic relativity, rendering their criticisms moot.

Rethinking Linguistic Relativity

The publication of the 1996 anthology Rethinking Linguistic Relativity edited by Gumperz and Levinson began a new period of linguistic relativity studies that focused on cognitive and social aspects. The book included studies on the linguistic relativity and universalist traditions. Levinson documented significant linguistic relativity effects in the linguistic conceptualization of spatial categories between languages. Separate studies by Bowerman and Slobin treated the role of language in cognitive processes. Bowerman showed that certain cognitive processes did not use language to any significant extent and therefore could not be subject to linguistic relativity. Slobin described another kind of cognitive process that he named "thinking for speaking" – the kind of process in which perceptional data and other kinds of prelinguistic cognition are translated into linguistic terms for communication. These, Slobin argues, are the kinds of cognitive process that are at the root of linguistic relativity.

Refinements

Researchers such as Boroditsky, Lucy and Levinson believe that language influences thought in more limited ways than the broadest early claims. Researchers examine the interface between thought (or cognition), language and culture and describe the relevant influences. They use experimental data to back up their conclusions.[40][41] Kay ultimately concluded that "[the] Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left".[42] His findings show that accounting for brain lateralization offers another perspective.

Psycholinguistic studies explored motion perception, emotion perception, object representation and memory.[43][44][45][46] The gold standard of psycholinguistic studies on linguistic relativity is now finding non-linguistic cognitive differences in speakers of different languages (thus rendering inapplicable Pinker's criticism that linguistic relativity is "circular").

Recent work with bilingual speakers attempts to distinguish the effects of language from those of culture on bilingual cognition including perceptions of time, space, motion, colors and emotion.[47] Researchers described differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in perception of color,[48] representations of time[49] and other elements of cognition.

Empirical research. Lucy identified three main strands of research into linguistic relativity.[50]

Structure-centered

The "structure-centered" approach starts with a language's structural peculiarity and examines its possible ramifications for thought and behavior. The defining example is Whorf's observation of discrepancies between the grammar of time expressions in Hopi and English. More recent research in this vein is Lucy's research describing how usage of the categories of grammatical number and of numeral classifiers in the Mayan language Yucatec result in Mayan speakers classifying objects according to material rather than to shape as preferred by English speakers.[51]

Domain-centered

The "domain-centered" approach selects a semantic domain and compares it across linguistic and cultural groups. It centered on color terminology, although this domain is acknowledged to be sub-optimal, because color perception, unlike other semantic domains, is hardwired into the neural system and as such is subject to more universal restrictions than other semantic domains.

Space is another semantic domain that has proven fruitful for linguistic relativity studies.[52] Spatial categories vary greatly across languages. Speakers rely on the linguistic conceptualization of space in performing many ordinary tasks. Levinson and others reported three basic spatial categorizations. While many languages use combinations of them, some languages exhibit only one type and related behaviors. For example, Yimithirr only uses absolute directions when describing spatial relations — the position of everything is described by using the cardinal directions. Speakers define a location as "north of the house", while an English speaker may use relative positions, saying "in front of the house" or "to the left of the house".[53]

Behavior-centered

The "behavior centered" approach starts by comparing behavior across linguistic groups and then searches for causes for that behavior in the linguistic system. Whorf attributed the occurrence of fires at a chemical plant to the workers' use of the word 'empty' to describe the barrels containing only explosive vapors. Bloom noticed that speakers of Chinese had unexpected difficulties answering counter-factual questions posed to them in a questionnaire. He concluded that this was related to the way in which counter-factuality is marked grammatically in Chinese. Other researchers attributed this result to Bloom's flawed translations.[54] Strømnes examined why Finnish factories had a higher occurrence of work related accidents than similar Swedish ones. He concluded that cognitive differences between the grammatical usage of Swedish prepositions and Finnish cases could have caused Swedish factories to pay more attention to the work process while Finnish factory organizers paid more attention to the individual worker.[55]

Everett's work on the Pirahã language of the Brazilian Amazon[56] found several peculiarities that he interpreted as corresponding to linguistically rare features, such as a lack of numbers and color terms in the way those are otherwise defined and the absence of certain types of clauses. Everett's conclusions were met with skepticism from universalists[57] who claimed that the linguistic deficit is explained by the lack of need for such concepts.[58]

Recent research with non-linguistic experiments in languages with different grammatical properties (e.g., languages with and without numeral classifiers or with different gender grammar systems) showed that language differences in human categorization are due to such differences.[59] Experimental research suggests that this linguistic influence on thought diminishes over time, as when speakers of one language are exposed to another.[60]

Color terminology: Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate

Research continued after Lenneberg/Roberts and Brown/Lenneberg. The studies showed a correlation between color term numbers and ease of recall in both Zuni and English speakers. Researchers attributed this to focal colors having higher codability than less focal colors, and not with linguistic relativity effects. Berlin/Kay found universal typological color principles that are determined by biological rather than linguistic factors.[30] This study sparked studies into typological universals of color terminology. Researchers such as Lucy,[61] Saunders[62] and Levinson[63] argued that Berlin and Kay's study does not refute linguistic relativity in color naming, because of unsupported assumptions in their study (such as whether all cultures in fact have a clearly-defined category of "color") and because of related data problems. Researchers such as Maclaury continued investigation into color naming. Like Berlin and Kay, Maclaury concluded that the domain is governed mostly by physical-biological universals.[64][65]

Other domains

Linguistic relativity inspired others to consider whether thought could be influenced by manipulating language.

Science and philosophy

The question bears on philosophical, psychological, linguistic and anthropological questions.

A major question is whether human psychological faculties are mostly innate or whether they are mostly a result of learning, and hence subject to cultural and social processes such as language. The innate view holds that humans share the same set of basic faculties, and that variability due to cultural differences is less important and that the human mind is a mostly biological construction, so that all humans sharing the same neurological configuration can be expected to have similar cognitive patterns.

Multiple alternatives have advocates. The contrary constructivist position holds that human faculties and concepts are largely influenced by socially constructed and learned categories, without many biological restrictions. Another variant is idealist, which holds that human mental capacities are generally unrestricted by biological-material strictures. Another is essentialist, which holds that essential differences may influence the ways individuals or groups experience and conceptualize the world. Yet another is relativist (Cultural relativism), which sees different cultural groups as employing different conceptual schemes that are not necessarily compatible or commensurable, nor more or less in accord with external reality.[66]

Another debate considers whether thought is a form of internal speech or is independent of and prior to language.

In the philosophy of language the question addresses the relations between language, knowledge and the external world, and the concept of truth. Philosophers such as Putnam, Fodor, Davidson, Dennett) see language as representing directly entities from the objective world and that categorization reflect that world. Other philosophers (e.g. Wittgenstein, Quine, Searle, Foucault) argue that categorization and conceptualization is subjective and arbitrary.

Another question is whether language is a tool for representing and referring to objects in the world, or whether it is a system used to construct mental representations that can be communicated.


Therapy and self-development

Main articles: General semantics and Neurolinguistic Programming
Sapir/Whorf contemporary Alfred Korzybski was independently developing his theory of general semantics, which was aimed at using language's influence on thinking to maximize human cognitive abilities. Korzybski's thinking was influenced by logical philosophy such as Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."[67] Although Korzybski was not aware of Sapir and Whorf's writings, the movement was followed by Whorf-admirer Chase, who fused Whorf's interest in cultural-linguistic variation with Korzybski's programme in his popular work "The Tyranny of Words". S. I. Hayakawa was a follower and popularizer of Korzybski's work, writing Language in Thought and Action. The general semantics movement influenced the development of neurolinguistic programming, another therapeutic technique that seeks to use awareness of language use to influence cognitive patterns.[68]

Korzybski independently described a "strong" version of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.[69]

    We do not realize what tremendous power the structure of an habitual language has. It is not an exaggeration to say that it enslaves us through the mechanism of s[emantic] r[eactions] and that the structure which a language exhibits, and impresses upon us unconsciously, is automatically projected upon the world around us.

    — Korzybski (1930) [70]

Artificial languages

Main articles: Constructed languages and Experimental languages

In their fiction, authors such as Ayn Rand and George Orwell explored how linguistic relativity might be exploited for political purposes. In Rand's Anthem, a fictive communist society removed the possibility of individualism by removing the word "I" from the language, and in Orwell's 1984 the authoritarian state created the language Newspeak to make it impossible for people to think critically about the government.

Others have been fascinated by the possibilities of creating new languages that could enable new, and perhaps better, ways of thinking. Examples of such languages designed to explore the human mind include Loglan, explicitly designed by James Cooke Brown to test the linguistic relativity hypothesis, by experimenting whether it would make its speakers think more logically. Speakers of Lojban, an evolution of Loglan, report that they feel speaking the language enhances their ability for logical thinking. Suzette Haden Elgin, who was involved in the early development of neurolinguistic programming, invented the language Láadan to explore linguistic relativity by making it easier to express what Elgin considered the female worldview, as opposed to Standard Average European languages which she considered to convey a "male centered" world view.[71] John Quijada's language Ithkuil was designed to explore the limits of the number of cognitive categories a language can keep its speakers aware of at once.[72] Similarly, Sonja Lang's Toki Pona was developed according to a Taoist point of view for exploring how (or if) such a language would direct human thought.[73]

Programming languages

APL programming language originator Kenneth E. Iverson believed that the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis applied to computer languages (without actually mentioning it by name). His Turing award lecture, "Notation as a tool of thought", was devoted to this theme, arguing that more powerful notations aided thinking about computer algorithms.[74]

The essays of Paul Graham explore similar themes, such as a conceptual hierarchy of computer languages, with more expressive and succinct languages at the top. Thus, the so-called blub paradox (after a hypothetical programming language of average complexity called Blub) says that anyone preferentially using some particular programming language will know that it is more powerful than some, but not that it is less powerful than others. The reason is that writing in some language means thinking in that language. Hence the paradox, because typically programmers are "satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs".[75]

In a 2003 presentation at an open source convention, Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the programming language Ruby, said that one of his inspirations for developing the language was the science fiction novel Babel-17, based on the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.[76]

My reference is the publication in English Wikipedia: 

Notes

Boas, Franz (1911). Handbook of American Indian languages. 1. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40. Washington: Government Print Office (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology).
Sapir, Edward (1929), "The status of linguistics as a science", Language, 5 (4): 207, doi:10.2307/409588
Sapir, Edward; Swadesh, Morris (1946). American Indian Grammatical Categories. pp. 100–107.
Sapir 1921, p. 213–4.
Sapir 1921, p. 215.


Vygotsky, L. (1934/1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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