more from Benjamin Lee Whorf

Single Idea 3915

[catalogued under 27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series]

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 Reference

'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]