Economist Risk Alert, dated Oct 22, 2010: the rising and large scale capital flows to risky assets like emerging market equities are creating asset bubbles and potential bursting of the bubbles could mire the global economy into 2008-sque financial crisis....
....all the small investors in emerging capital markets (including Bangladesh), TAKE HEED! The next big market correction may be just round the corner.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Does 'language' limits our capacity to think?
Read this rather interesting discourse.....
It seems to be an old debate initiated by Benjamin Lee Whorf, a US chemical engineer, about 70 years back. He hypothised use of words and associated concepts can effectively limit our capacity to think or visulalize. Using languages of North Amaerican natives as an example, he pointed out how due to absence of the words or concepts, they are unable to conceptualize the very notion of 'flow of time'.
Whorf's fantastical point of view, however, did not sustain because of a lack of hard evidence....
....Until more recently, about 50 years ago, when Roman Jakobson espoused the maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” Example? They provide some interesting ones - Say, you are an Englishman and you are saying "I spent the last evening with a neighbour", you are keeping the neighbour's sex in context; but, if you are German or French, you would be 'forced' to chose a 'sex' for the neighbour because of the very make up of the language. So, Jacobson says, when one speaks in a particular language, the language compels the speaker to make a habit of thinking certain concepts and notions or in a certain pattern which would be otherwise for another language.... (Ref: NYT)
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Note: how the topic has transformed over time - from a mechanical or functional discussion to a philosophical discourse.
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