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Category: Language

Why Language Is The Human Superpower

By Phil Mayes Posted on April 6, 2024 Posted in Language, Musings, Society
Why Language Is The Human Superpower

How can we best make sense of the world? There are a number of areas that, taken together, give a useful description of the human condition: the nature of society, how language is essential for its complexity, and further consequences …

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Writing Structure

By Phil Mayes Posted on June 20, 2023 Posted in Language Tagged with Writing
Writing Structure

In our writing group, there was at one time an ongoing discussion between two members on structure: one plotted out the entire arc before writing; the other jumped into the stream and let the story cut its own course. I …

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Why Language is a Superpower and Why That Has Created a Problem

By Phil Mayes Posted on February 23, 2022 Posted in Language, Musings, Society Tagged with Emotions, Fear, Love
Why Language is a Superpower and Why That Has Created a Problem

We humans are a wildly successful species. Why is that? As life developed, it first responded to the world with reflexes, then emotions, then by thinking, but it was the human invention of language that turned thinking into a superpower. …

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Identity

By Phil Mayes Posted on January 22, 2018 Posted in Language, Musings Tagged with Holon, Meditation

The entire canon of Western thought, from Aristotelian logic to George Boole (he of boolean arithmetic) to the divide-and-conquer approach of science, invites us to view and categorize the world according to its differences, not its similarities. A table is …

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Perception of Blue is a Recent Skill

By Phil Mayes Posted on March 23, 2015 Posted in Language

No one could see the color blue until modern times. I’ve always suspected that our language affects how we see the world, and this is a great example.

Split Infinitives

By Phil Mayes Posted on July 18, 2014 Posted in Language

I’ve always had a secret liking for split infinitives. Today I found a perfect example. Therapists are trained not to tell you exactly what to do, no matter how much I ask. I would much rather see (using brackets to …

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