David Peat

Language 85Wittgenstein’s early “picture theory” of language suggests that weare able to say things because language points to things in the realworld. In Bohr’s case there is nothing within language that will pointto an underlying quantum world. Of course, Wittgenstein modifiedhis position to view language in a more flexible light and yet Bohr’sstructure on what we can say about the quantum world still appears tohold.The Blackfoot and the RheomodeBut are all languages the same? Or do some provide a linguistic pointof entry into a quantum world of constant flux and transformation? Inthe previous chapter we met a society that lives in a world of constantflux. Does this mean that their language is also different from ours,and maybe even more adapted to a discussion of quantum theory?Blackfoot elders say that the way they talk amongst themselves is profoundlydifferent from the way they talk to non-Native people, andthat associated with this is a very different way of thinking about picturingthe world.Before we examine this claim we must first look at a somewhatcontroversial theory called the Whorf–Sapir hypothesis. This states thatthe language spoken by a particular society is deeply connected to itsworldview. The way societies structure events and history and understandtime and spatial separation can be discovered by carefully examiningthe way their languages work.The debate surrounding the Whorf–Sapir hypothesis tends to obscureits significant contribution as a way to approach alternativeworldviews. The currently fashionable Chomskian approach to linguisticsargues that the differences between the world’s language are onlysuperficial, for all language rests upon a common “deep linguistic structure.”So how could merely superficial aspects of a particular languageever give rise to deep differences in worldviews?In his popular account of linguistics, The Language Instinct, StevenPinker sets up a reductionist version of the Whorf–Sapir hypothesisand then proceeds to shoot it down. Pinker claims that Whorf–Sapir