The Theory of Evolution | 297 



we are compelled to say "It is snowing," although the "it" is a 

 meaningless word which soothes our sense of syntactic aesthetics 

 only. Similarly we tend to think of natural selection as something 

 that somehow changes a population. 



People of other cultures order natural phenomena in ways quite 

 different from those we consider natural and proper. For instance, 

 Eskimos have no generic term for water, but they have a detailed 

 and useful terminology describing the various kinds of frozen and 

 liquid water. Gauchos have some 200 terms for horse colors, but 

 they divide the vegetable world into four species: pasta, fodder; 

 paja, bedding; cardo, woody materials; and ijiujos, all other plants. 

 As a language system develops, the effects of its structure seem to 

 be invasive and widespread. All aspects of the culture eventually 

 are involved, and a network develops that is difficult to escape. It 

 has been suggested that the person most nearly free to describe 

 nature impartially would be a linguist familiar with many widely 

 different linguistic systems. 



Some impression of the relation of language to behavior and to 

 the description of nature can be gained by comparing even super- 

 ficially the basic aspects of Indo-European languages with a very 

 different language. The language of the Hopi Indians has been 

 studied in considerable detail by Whorf and offers revealing com- 

 parisons. It is difficult to describe the differences in English, for the 

 languages are scarcely congruent. For example, our concept of 

 plurality causes us to use cardinal numbers in referring both to real 

 and imaginary pluralities. We count 10 objects and regard them as 

 a group. ( However, we say that there are "10 at a time," introducing 

 the concept of time into group perception.) When we refer to 10 

 hours or to any other cyclic sequence, actually only one item is 

 experienced at a time; the others are remembered or predicted. We 

 think of time in such a way as to "know" that there was a day yes- 

 terday and that there will be a day tomorrow. We can actually 

 quantify "tomorrow" quite "precisely" in minutes, hours, days, 

 months, and years. The Hopi Indian, on the other hand, would not 

 think of using numbers for entities that do not form an objective 

 group. He recognizes a group of 10 Indians. But, if they stay for a 

 visit, he reports that they "left after the tenth day," not that "they 

 stayed 10 days." 



It is interesting and important to realize that similar differences 

 between the languages are manifest when physical quantity, phases 

 of cycles, and other aspects of time such as duration are investigated. 

 Our mass nouns, which we use to refer to unbounded homogeneous 

 phenomena, imply, besides indefiniteness, lack of outline or size. 



