Benjamin Whorf Quotes
My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language." Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, edited by John B. Carroll, MIT Press, 1956, p. 135.
Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer. Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that differences between the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. This principle has frequently been called the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity. The idea, however, follows from post-Hegelian 19th century philosophy, especially from Wilhelm von Humboldt; and from Wilhelm Wundt's Völkerpsychologie.
