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FeedWednesday, August 6, 2008
The SinuousThread
Currently reading Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, Language as a Window into Human Nature, and came across this stunning paragraph in the chapter, “What’s in a Name?”
“It is a strange and thrilling thought that every time you refer to Aristotle, you are connected through a very long chain of speakers to the man himself. And every time you use a word to refer to a thing, you fasten yourself to the end of a sinuous thread in space-time which connects you to the first people who looked on that star, or that creature, or that substance, and decided it needed a name.”
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