more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
A Hopi has no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past.
Clarification
The Hopi are a tribe of native Americans
Gist of Idea
The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future
Source
Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.57)
Book Ref
'A Companion to Epistemology', ed/tr. Dancy,J. /Sosa,E. [Blackwell 1993], p.57
A Reaction
If true, this would not so much support relativism of language as the view that that conception of time is actually false.
Related Idea
Idea 5103 Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle]
| 22961 | The present moment is obviously a necessary feature of time [Aristotle] |
| 3915 | The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future [Whorf] |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |
| 14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |
| 15187 | It is claimed that the tense view entails the unreality of both future and past [Le Poidevin] |
| 15192 | We share a common now, but not a common here [Le Poidevin] |
| 15205 | Tensed theorists typically try to reduce the tenseless to the tensed [Le Poidevin] |
| 16266 | There is one ordered B series, but an infinitude of A series, depending on when the present is [Maudlin] |
| 14608 | A-theorists, unlike B-theorists, believe some sort of objective distinction between past, present and future [Zimmerman,DW] |
| 14006 | Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne] |
| 22897 | The A-series says a past event is becoming more past, but how can it do that? [Bardon] |
| 22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |