So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language.
Interpretation
Language shapes our understanding of reality and limits the questions we can ask.
This quote by Michael Polanyi emphasizes the profound influence that language has on our perception of the universe. He suggests that the structure and vocabulary of a language not only frame our inquiries but also inherently endorse the theories of reality that are embedded within that language. This raises important questions about how our unique ways of speaking can restrict or guide our understanding of complex ideas and the world around us.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture discussing the impact of language on thought.
The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.
We cannot ultimately specify the grounds (either metaphysical or logical or empirical) upon which we hold that our knowledge is true. Being committed to such grounds, dwelling in them, we are projecting ourselves to what we believe to be true from or through these grounds. We cannot therefore see what they are. We cannot look at them because we are looking with them.
Books about spies and traitors - and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors - generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors.
I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God's creation, woman, the object of our lust.
Puddleglum's my name. But it doesn't matter if you forget it. I can always tell you again.
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we're going to be having a shufti to see if it's solid, aren't we, we're not going to be asking, 'Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?
The line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.