Re: CHAT: "the future," sci-fi, Quecha (Le Guin)

Yes, I didn't mean to say the metaphor didn't exist before the industrial
revolution.  I just meant the degree of energy we spend on each of those
aspects of time is different - we look more at the future than ever before,
and we expect life to be drastically different in the future.  Most people
today probably don't find it too far fetched that in 500 years we'll have
flying cars or people living on the moon, but if you asked people 500 years
ago if we would have cloning, television, or passenger airplanes today,
there's a good chance they'd think you crazy.  As for philosophy - it
certainly has an effect on the way we think and our concepts of time, even
if we aren't aware of our intellectual heritage... however, I don't believe
either of these things would directly impact language... (Kinship on the
other hand...)

Andy

>From: Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>Subject: Re: CHAT: "the future," sci-fi, Quecha (Le Guin)
>Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 17:08:52 EDT
>
>That strikes me as unlikely.  Didn't English speakers use the
>past-is-behind
>and future-is-ahead metaphors before the scientific and industrial
>revolutions?  (And most English speakers couldn't identify Hegelian
>philosophy if their lives depended on it.  It's hardly likely to have
>influenced oridnary speech.)
>
>In a message dated 6/30/2002 3:43:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>cathode_ray00@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
>
> >
> > >So why *do* we see "what happened before now" as abaft us, and not
>before
> > >us?
> > >
> >
> > I think Hegelian philosophy has a lot to do with it, as did the
>scientific
> > and industrial revolutions and the subsequent expectation of progress
>that
> > came with these things.   . . .
> > Andy
> >
>



_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com