COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 99 



the dichotomies of subject and object, mind and body, wa\ e and 

 particle, etc. 



Reflection of the logical sense of those who made it, a language 

 cannot but condition the reasoning of those who use it, whether in 

 science or elsewhere. A language conditions the way in which ques- 

 tions are put and the way in which answers are formulated; to some 

 extent it determines even what questions can be put and the kinds 

 of answers that can be given. As questions put to nature, even our 

 experiments will not then escape conditioning by the cosmology of 

 our language and, as Whorf strongly emphasizes, the same irreduc- 

 ible element of subjectivity will color what we like to think of as 

 nature's answer. 



. . . the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions 

 which has to be organized by our minds— and this means largely by 

 the linguistic systems in our minds. 



... no individual is free to describe nature with absolute imparti- 

 ality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while 

 he thinks himself most free. 



. . . users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their 

 grammars toward different types of observations and different evalua- 

 tions of externally similar acts of observation, . . . 



The aesthetic factor. "Taste" for classic simplicity or baroque com- 

 plexity—or taste perhaps gratified in great and multiplex ends pro- 

 duced by few and fundamentally simple mechanisms— such taste 

 shapes cosmology and, thence, enters into the making of "scientific 

 taste." Dingle cites an amusing example of the aesthetic factor, sig- 

 nificant though it was pronounced in the 13th century, well before 

 the rise of modern science. Contemplating the extremely cumber- 

 some Ptolemaic system, the devout and learned Alphonso of Castile 

 was moved to remark that, had he been present at the Creation, he 

 could have given the Creator some good advice. The same feeling of 

 repugnance for the Ptolemaic system enters into the complex of 

 motivations that stirred Copernicus to the creation of his system; and 

 aesthetic appeal almost alone sustains Copernican astronomy through 

 the difficult first half-century of its life. 



Consider that the Copernican system could be, and was, held to 

 "explain" the familiar only in terms of the preposterous. The changes 

 in the heavens are "explained" by a triple motion of the earth of 



