Benjamin Whorf Quotes

Benjamin Whorf — American Scientist born on April 24, 1897, died on July 26, 1941

Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer. Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that because of linguistic differences in grammar and usage, speakers of different languages conceptualize and experience the world differently. This principle has frequently been called the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity... (wikipedia)

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

At the same time, new concepts and abstractions flow into the picture, taking up the task of describing the universe without reference to such time or space - abstractions for which our language lacks adequate terms.

But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.

Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages.

Benjamin Whorf Quotes

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