Changes

H4 – The one thing from the lecture which caught my eye was the debate on laws versus language. Though I previously would have chosen laws, claiming that the same ideas for governance must hold true in all languages, I have since changed my position. Though law is indeed an integral portion of society, law could not exist at all without language. Therefore, language is more important by default because without it laws would not and could not exist. However, the significance of language is far more profound than mere concrete manifestations thereof can illustrate. Language shapes the human mind more so than any other single thing in the history of human civilization. When people think they do so almost exclusively in terms of words, whether they are the words they believe, the words they hear, or the words they are accustomed to using. Think about it this way: the laws of ancient Athens allowed it to thrive; however, would it have thrived nearly so much without having had arguably the most powerful language in the history of the world, Greek, as its base? Or better yet: would Athens have achieved the same environment and laws to accommodate great thinking had it been based in a different, less powerful, language? More simply, one must possess the terms of language within which to think and ultimately convey the things of which he has thought.

H4 – The one thing from the lecture which caught my eye was the debate on laws versus language. Though I previously would have chosen laws, claiming that the same ideas for governance must hold true in all languages, I have since changed my position. Though law is indeed an integral portion of society, law could not exist at all without language. Therefore, language is more important by default because without it laws would not and could not exist. However, the significance of language is far more profound than mere concrete manifestations thereof can illustrate. Language shapes the human mind more so than any other single thing in the history of human civilization. When people think they do so almost exclusively in terms of words, whether they are the words they believe, the words they hear, or the words they are accustomed to using. Think about it this way: the laws of ancient Athens allowed it to thrive; however, would it have thrived nearly so much without having had arguably the most powerful language in the history of the world, Greek, as its base? Or better yet: would Athens have achieved the same environment and laws to accommodate great thinking had it been based in a different, less powerful, language? More simply, one must possess the terms of language within which to think and ultimately convey the things of which he has thought.