Last week a big fuss was made over a striped dress: was it blue and black or gold and white (or some such combinations)? In the full light of day, it was the darker colors, but in other light, most, including myself, saw it as white and gold. Ophthalmologists weighed in - those who saw it in the darker colors in a certain light, even though those were correct, had a yellow-green color blindness. Thus, in what I read, it was explicitly tied to the eye-brain physiological structure.
However, the event sparked other comments, the most notable (for me) discussing the color blue. Blue, said many experts quoted in the piece, was never mentioned in early texts such as the the Odyssey (instead, we had the "bright" sky and the "wine dark" sea), nor in all but a few instances, if I remember correctly, in the Old Testament. Ethnographic accounts were used to back this up, showing us that many primitive peoples, and some tribal peoples today, do not have a word for "blue." More importantly, and astonishingly, they did or do not even recognize the color blue.
The idea is an old one. The Sapir and Whorf hypothesis, brought forth in the 1930's, stated that words and syntax showed what people recognized, and people recognized what they had words and linguistic structure for. Other properties or ideas, then, were either poorly understood or absent entirely from the conscious mind. What Sapir and Whorf had in mind, after studying the Indians of the American South West, was even more far-reaching than colors; for instance, even the notion of time was locked into a language, and the language locked people into that notion of time. To the Zuni, time was not sequential but circular. It was in their syntax, and affected how they led their lives. The 9 to 5 world we live in was a wonder and a puzzle to them, just as their's was to us. Volition was also different - they would not say that a donkey kicked someone, but that a kick happened from the donkey - and so on. Subtle but very meaningful differences affecting the nature of morality and nature itself.
These concepts might have even greater implications - for our own trajectory, or evolution as a species that reach beyond words to fundamental concepts. For instance, for all but a spiritual elite, the idea of one god - or monotheism - was a wrenching concept, one that did not match with the more obvious idea of a world filled with separate qualities, with each having its own spirit. Yet the one-god concept was necessary - essential, I believe - to create the notion of universal (spiritual) equality of men and women. This, too, was a wrenching concept, even for those of the monotheistic religions. And yet one led to the other, as a matter of deep inner logic - if we were all of one God, we were all of a piece, and equally worthy. Today, regardless of one's overall beliefs, the idea of this type of equality is taken for granted by much of the contemporary world. Many might not know that it took eons to develop this thought that brought about the American Declaration of Independence, the United Nations, and at least the idea that all humans have basic rights. Such a notion only a century ago would have been met with astonishment or peals of laughter by much of the world, which lived in groups almost universally called - by themselves that is - "The People," or the chosen ones.
The greater question is: are we being led as a species to expand our grasp of reality, or is our reality expanding only in one direction in response to an increasingly interdependent world? On the side of the latter, we can see that we have lost as much as we have gained in modernity - who among us can track a deer over rock and through water? Who can intuit a tsunami or great storm hours before it happens without meteorological instruments, as many traditional people can do today? And who can steer a canoe across thousands of miles of ocean by the feel of the waves, as the Polynesians once did?
On the other hand, these lost abilities also point to a more unified world - if those who had them could understand that, which they often did not. If one knows that all is connected, one can tell from some things that other things are about to happen; and yet, the concept of human unity in a real sense was missing. We might then say that these abilities were expanded to a universal moral level - and in that, we have positive evolution, for greater knowledge might be tracked best by how we understand the relationship between more and more things and processes - until we reach the hypothetical gold standard of the Theory of Everything; and not just every THING, but everything, including concepts of god, humans, and morality. For as the color blue shows, and Sapir and Whorf hypothesized, it is the concepts themselves that give us what we know of our reality. And once we know that, our ability to transform the world into a desired reality is expanded almost infinitely. FK
However, the event sparked other comments, the most notable (for me) discussing the color blue. Blue, said many experts quoted in the piece, was never mentioned in early texts such as the the Odyssey (instead, we had the "bright" sky and the "wine dark" sea), nor in all but a few instances, if I remember correctly, in the Old Testament. Ethnographic accounts were used to back this up, showing us that many primitive peoples, and some tribal peoples today, do not have a word for "blue." More importantly, and astonishingly, they did or do not even recognize the color blue.
The idea is an old one. The Sapir and Whorf hypothesis, brought forth in the 1930's, stated that words and syntax showed what people recognized, and people recognized what they had words and linguistic structure for. Other properties or ideas, then, were either poorly understood or absent entirely from the conscious mind. What Sapir and Whorf had in mind, after studying the Indians of the American South West, was even more far-reaching than colors; for instance, even the notion of time was locked into a language, and the language locked people into that notion of time. To the Zuni, time was not sequential but circular. It was in their syntax, and affected how they led their lives. The 9 to 5 world we live in was a wonder and a puzzle to them, just as their's was to us. Volition was also different - they would not say that a donkey kicked someone, but that a kick happened from the donkey - and so on. Subtle but very meaningful differences affecting the nature of morality and nature itself.
These concepts might have even greater implications - for our own trajectory, or evolution as a species that reach beyond words to fundamental concepts. For instance, for all but a spiritual elite, the idea of one god - or monotheism - was a wrenching concept, one that did not match with the more obvious idea of a world filled with separate qualities, with each having its own spirit. Yet the one-god concept was necessary - essential, I believe - to create the notion of universal (spiritual) equality of men and women. This, too, was a wrenching concept, even for those of the monotheistic religions. And yet one led to the other, as a matter of deep inner logic - if we were all of one God, we were all of a piece, and equally worthy. Today, regardless of one's overall beliefs, the idea of this type of equality is taken for granted by much of the contemporary world. Many might not know that it took eons to develop this thought that brought about the American Declaration of Independence, the United Nations, and at least the idea that all humans have basic rights. Such a notion only a century ago would have been met with astonishment or peals of laughter by much of the world, which lived in groups almost universally called - by themselves that is - "The People," or the chosen ones.
The greater question is: are we being led as a species to expand our grasp of reality, or is our reality expanding only in one direction in response to an increasingly interdependent world? On the side of the latter, we can see that we have lost as much as we have gained in modernity - who among us can track a deer over rock and through water? Who can intuit a tsunami or great storm hours before it happens without meteorological instruments, as many traditional people can do today? And who can steer a canoe across thousands of miles of ocean by the feel of the waves, as the Polynesians once did?
On the other hand, these lost abilities also point to a more unified world - if those who had them could understand that, which they often did not. If one knows that all is connected, one can tell from some things that other things are about to happen; and yet, the concept of human unity in a real sense was missing. We might then say that these abilities were expanded to a universal moral level - and in that, we have positive evolution, for greater knowledge might be tracked best by how we understand the relationship between more and more things and processes - until we reach the hypothetical gold standard of the Theory of Everything; and not just every THING, but everything, including concepts of god, humans, and morality. For as the color blue shows, and Sapir and Whorf hypothesized, it is the concepts themselves that give us what we know of our reality. And once we know that, our ability to transform the world into a desired reality is expanded almost infinitely. FK
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