Language is a strange thing. I have been thinking about language’s effects on thought since Nadeem asked me the other day whether I think in Turkish or English. It’s a difficult question to answer. My first response was “I don’t think in a specific language” but now I am not so sure. I know that [...]
A beautiful talk by Elif Shafak. “…communities of the like minded is one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world. And it’s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about [...]
“…but it’s worth recalling Wittgenstein’s remark on the subject. ‘Tell me,’ he asked a friend, ‘why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?’ His friend replied, ‘Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is [...]