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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]
3917 | Scientific thought is essentially a specialised part of Indo-European languages [Whorf] |
3915 | The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future [Whorf] |
3916 | Hopi consistently prefers verbs and events to nouns and things [Whorf] |