not even a little surprising - as Ive pointed out many times, contemporary American English goes out of its way to refuse to distinguish epistemic and existential senses of believe (not to mention the way it shades into emotive statements); and far too many scientific spokesfolk persist in saying believe in... when reasonable alternative formulations are readily available (even believe that... is somewhat better, though not much). Sloppy language and conceptualization (by nearly everyone) isnt the basis of all the culture wars stuff by itself, but it is significant in the incommensurability of much of the discourse on all sides. Not the only example (the SF author, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., points to the shift in discrimination as a very important one, as it taints any claim to understanding good and evil, or even good and bad, with nasty undertones), but I think pretty central.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 03:37:29 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015