Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Science Made Stupid: Time and the Aymara

I am not even going to get into this right now.

The little bit in here that's not fairly stupid is actually a bit interesting. Apparently the Aymara gesture behind themselves to indicate the future, and in front of themselves to indicate the past. Pretty cool/weird, eh?

If you don't suffer fools gladly, however, don't click on the link. This gestural quirk of the Aymara is used as an evidential base for leaping to some jaw-droppingly dopey conclusions. Here's the summary of the news report (I want to stress that I am not making this up, and they're being serious, not cute):

"New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world's studied cultures -- so that the past is ahead of them and the future behind."

(Puts head in hand, grumbles incoherently, goes back to work on alleged book.)

2 Comments:

Blogger MH said...

What's interesting to me is that I swear I've heard that same fact repeated about various african cultures as well. In any case, I don't see what the significance of it is supposed to be - we say the past is behind us and the future before us because we're talking about travelling; they say the past is before us and the future behind because they're talking about looking at it (or whatever). How that's supposed to be breathtaking or dramatically different, though....

3:01 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Yeah, Dr. P, exactly what I was thinking, re: the travelling and looking bits.

*Abosolutely nothing interesting about temporal concepts follows from that.*

It's like shades of Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Interesting about the African tribes...I need to check that out.

5:01 PM  

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