Lambda the Ultimate

And the well-trodden paths are largely demarcated by language and all the learned/discovered higher level concepts expressed therein.

Original thought does not come easy, and in most cases the interaction with others is needed to stimulate real progress.

Conversely, if one's formulations are restricted to a small and static language that is not suited to express general concepts (of course I'm talking of programming languages), this constitutes a severe handicap in higher-level thinking.

That's why I said that subject matter of design/code patterns should be considered strictly separated from the programming language domain, the latter only being suitable for illustrative purposes.

For example, a beginning C-programmer, contemplating the well-known "while (*s++ = *t++);" idiom might find it concise and elegant, rather than primitive and unreadable. That, for me, is a clear example of restricted thought.

See www.lojban.org for details.

Oh, and: I have a book of old Hawaiian folk legends; one appendix contains a list of the sixty-plus names that the islanders had for the different winds and rains of the region. I suppose it's no different from our plethora of different names for sorting algorithms.

This principle, or hypothesis, is usually called The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and states, roughly, that language influences (or controls) the way one thinks about reality.

Going off on a total tangent, I did find an article on How to build a language that discusses language construction - including Klingon. And if that's not enuf of a recovery for my mistake, don't forget that there is actually a Klingon Programming Language for those with way too much Star Trek on the Brain.

Top 12 things likely to be said by a Klingon Programmer: 1) "Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!"

I guess this isn't the most reliable evidence in the world, but it was a striking sensation.

Also, reading Spanish literature, I'm not aware of any great difference in how thoughts are conveyed, compared to English. I suspect any differences are subtle unless languages are very separate. Is it any different with Hebrew and English, for example?

Perosnally, I don't find great differences between how I think in English and in Hebrew, esp. as regards programming problems. The most obvious difference is vocabulary, and indeed when I need to think about things for which I have a better vocabulary in English, I tend to think in English. Mostly this is automatic. A classic example is when you read technical litterature. I am just now in the process of writing a study guide for a programming language course, and I find it almost impossible to translate concepts like scope or aliasing.

Since I am the one who raised this issue, I want to give some more information about it.

Mostly I am basing what I write on The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (under the entry Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis) and on Linguistic Relativity by Eleanor Rosch in Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science

Whorf's classic work on Indian languages claimed much more than vocabulary differences. For example the English phrase It is a dripping spring is expressed in Apache by something like As water,or springs, whiteness moves downward.

The fantastic claim is that the language doesn't use actions or things (verbs and nouns), but only events.

It is quite difficult to study the metaphysical world-view embodid in language, using empirical tools. Thus most empirical work centered on studying how different languages classify objects in the real world, by means of their vocabularies. Many studies tried to examine how speakers of different languages treated colour, this being a convinient micro-domain, for which objective/scientific tools exist. Some very interesting studies appear in the literature. For example, it was shown that colours that are more codable (e.g., have shorter names) are more easily remembered. This shows an effect of language on memory.

Alas, the general conclusion from all these studies seems to be that basic colour terminology appears to be universal, and that the colour space appears to be a prime example of the influence of underlying perceptual-cognitive factors on linguistic categories.

Another interesting research approach is based on behavioural differences. One example is the the effort to account for differences in Chinese and English speakers' facility with counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning by reference to the marking of counterfactuals in the two languages.

It seems that these days the strong from of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not popular. I am sure programming languages offer a great opportunity for research. If any cognitive scientist is reading this, I'd be happy to collaborate

I'd like to read more about this kind of thing, but the first of these is a tad expensive for me and the second is out of print. I've just thumbed through my copy of Rosenthal's The Nature of Mind, but it doesn't deal much with language. What else would you recommend? Thanks!

PS Incidentally, I joined the local library today and picked up The Number Sense by Dehaene which goes into quite some detail about the extent to which simple numerical calculations within the brain are independent of language (see an earlier comment of mine on this thread) (I also got Monk's hefty biography of Wittgenstein, which looks very interesting).

The Sapir and Whorf collections of selected writings look promising, but I haven't read them.

Cheers!

[I'm not sure this is a criticism - the approach is very much syntax/science based, which is fair enough]

First, you shouldn't take Amazon reviews with a grain salt. They are usually biased and not very informative.

I browsed the collections of Sapir and Whorf writings when I was in the US last summer. They looked quite interesting. They are about languages and culture, and not aout computers - so if you want the connection you have to do it yourself.

As I said here repeatedly, the S-W hypothsis is not very popular these days. I tried to give some reasons why, when I discussed empirical evidence, above.

I still think the idea has some merit, esp. when it comes to restricted languages, like PL.

Maybe someday I'll write a book about it- I'll be sure to let you know...

Sorry I can't be of more help.