Dear Jinan,
Your long post contain a great many assertions. To answer this kind of post requires a long response, and I don’t have time to write it. To understand and respond to the assertions you make doesn’t simply take time. It takes a great deal of background knowledge. This is why people study research methods and methodology, history of science, history of ideas, and philosophy of science. There are no uniform views on these issues, Far from it. What is the case, however, is that people do understand the questions, and in doing so, they can set a context for the views they have.
To “ascertain whether something is a fact or not” requires experience, skill, judgement, and knowledge. This is not simply a matter of reading a few books: it is a matter of learning to read factual assertions while evaluating the responsibility and reliability of the source.
That you believe something does not make it a fact. The examples you gave on language are “something that truly exists or happens” *for you*, “something that has actual existence” *for you*. This does not make this fact reliable, valid, or correct. It means that you have formed an opinion. The facts that you believe you have uncovered may not be facts, even though you think they are. Or these facts may, indeed, be something that truly exists in a specific situation — and you may not properly understand the causal factors. Moreover, if you have been making these observations in one specific situation, the facts you believe you have found may be unique to that situation. They may not apply to most of the world’s seven and a half billion people, and they may not apply in the 7,000 languages and cultures that people have studied.
Your statement that “Most people aren’t even aware of their worldview as being a worldview” applies to everyone, including you. That is why most of us take on board the evidence, findings, and opinions of many people before reaching a conclusion.
Advice from an expert is opinion — but experts form expert opinion based on a wide range of factors: experience, skill, knowledge, and information of the expert — as well as empirical research in the field of their expertise; carefully reported findings of other experts; evaluation, debate, and judgment in the field.
Now I’m guessing that few people on this list have done any kind of first-hand research on the issues in literacy and language usage that you raise. A few list members occasionally read on this topic, as I do. There are certainly people on the list who are willing to speculate or conjecture in the absence of reasonable evidence. In my view, this is the status of your assertions. You’ve taken your personal observations for global facts affecting all of the world’s 7,500,000,000 or so occupants and all of the world’s 7,000 or so languages. Since you’ve announced your views without explaining how you reached these views and without telling us anything about the methods you used, I’m not even sure that you have seen what you think you have seen. I recognize that you genuinely believe that you have seen it, but your universalizing assertions about language and literacy do not apply to most of the world's seven billion, five hundred million people, and they do not apply to most of the people in the world’s seven thousand or so languages.
It apparently doesn’t occur to you “to give a ‘name’ to the way [you] see things. To [you], it’s simply how things are. It’s [your view of] reality.”
There is no point in explaining why I find some of the material you have suggested and posted is not reliable. Take Leonard Shlain — his books are fascinating, and they are filled with simple errors of fact. In one book, for example, he claimed that the development of Cubism from 1907-1912 influenced Einstein’s theory of relativity. This cannot be right — Einstein began work on relativity in the first years of the 1900s, and published the special theory of relativity in 1906. While Einstein published the general theory of relativity in 1916, Einstein did not consider his work in relation to the fractured surfaces of Cubism. He almost named his theory the theory of invariance because it relied on universal constants. Leonard Shlain was, nevertheless, a scientist and a professor of surgery in his day job, and he was a pioneer in laparoscopic surgery. It is a good thing for Shlain's patients that his medical research was empirical rather than speculative.
As for Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter Ong, it is my opinion that their work does not support your contentions. Walter Ong was a priest and theologian first, only then a professor of English literature and culture. McLuhan was a professor of English. They had some awareness and interest in these issues, but they did not undertake empirical studies in language usage. Harold Innis — McLuhan’s mentor — was an economist, political economist, and economic historian. His was was terrific — I draw on his ideas frequently. But Innis never undertook empirical studies in these issues either.
If one indulges in cherry-picking to locate only those items that support our views while ignoring all others, any conversation on any topic begins to resemble the debates of medieval theologians.
I don’t mind you pointing out the issues you raise. Even so, I don’t agree. It seems to me that you look for articles to support your view without reading further. Do literacy and language use influence the people that use a language? Of course. Do literacy and language use affect people in the ways that you believe they do? No.
Without debating every issue you raise, I point once again to two specific comments:
—snip—
[1] “Language became prominent only after printed word entered our consciousness. This caused the externalization and objectification of ‘knowledge’.”?
[2] “Non literate people have more verbs in their language and we have more nouns. Our language is actor centered and their language is action centered.”?
—snip—
On these issues, the evidence is clear. These statements are mistaken.
You do not plan to change your beliefs. You’ve been making this kind of argument for years now. Since I prefer the work of serious experts in linguistics and cognitive linguistics to personal assumptions, I don’t plan to change my views either. That suggests to me that it is time to withdraw from this conversation.
Let me close with one thought: I have looked at some of your work on early childhood education, and much of what I read seems interesting, even inspired. I’d be happy to have had you as a kindergarten teacher because your methods awaken the imagination and inspire confidence.
At the same time, I wouldn’t have wanted you as a science teacher.
My parents had a kindergarten and nursery school when I was a child. I went to their school and loved it. Around the age of five or six, I started to ask a lot of questions about nature, about history, about the sciences. My parents did not know the answers. They purchased an excellent encyclopedia, so that I could find responsible and reasonably accurate information. They also got me a library card so that I could dig deeper when I wanted to.
I have never accepted the current state of knowledge in anything as final. But I do recognize that experts in fields where I am not expert may actually know something worth reading before reaching an opinion. When you read a post, an article, or a book filled with mistaken facts, you tend not to accept the conclusions.
Prior to 1906, many of the world’s physicists did not accept the physical reality of atoms. At best, they acknowledged atoms as a useful heuristic device in calculations. Einstein’s article on Brownian motion changed the views that many physicists held until then. His article presented a series of well established facts, known to all chemists and physicists. The revolutionary aspect of this article was that Einstein demonstrated how these facts, taken together, demonstrated the reality of atomic theory.
So far, you have been offering opinions and making skillful arguments based on opinion, but you have not demonstrated the facts that would convince me that your views on literacy, language, and culture are correct.
With this second post, I will end my participation in this thread.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
