AN ECCENTRIC OBSERVATION

The Power of Words to Shape One's Perception of Reality

Michael Round

May 17, 2009

The Copernican Revolution put the Sun at the center of the universe, with planetary motion about that center.

But how do the planets orbit the sun?  We know the answer:  elliptically.  Kepler was the first to propose such a theory.

The ellipse.

Ask any high-school-aged-or-above individual to draw this motion and you will get something that looks as follows:

But what exactly is an ellipse?  What's the measure of the "flatness", or lack of, of the ellipse?  It's a term called eccentricity.

A circle is a special case of an ellipse: the "eccentricity" is zero.  On the other end of the spectrum, an eccentricity of one means you're approaching a flat line.  Eccentricity:  a value between 0 and 1.

But if the eccentricity e is 0<e<1, and if our typical drawing is as demonstrated above, that means we have, in our minds, the orbit of the earth about the sun to have an eccentricity of about 0.5 - halfway between a circle and a flat line.

What is the actual eccentricity?  Approximately 0.0167.  Almost zero.  Almost a perfect circle!

Why do we draw the orbit elliptically when it more closely resembles a circle?  We hear the idea "ellipse" and have an image of what that means - and sometimes the two bear no relation to one another.

The word creates a mis-perception of what's actually happening in reality!

Dr. William Kessel, in Native American Symposium, May 5-6, 1992, retells a story of anthropologist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf carrying out an experiment is this regard.  Whorf noted individuals were more likely to smoke cigarettes in proximity to “nearly empty” gas drums than “mostly full” ones.

Why?

Whorf speculated that people felt secure smoking near the empty gas drums because the word “empty” carries with it the connotation of "safe", "not hazardous", "void", and "inert".

In fact, the gas fumes which mix with oxygen in the partially empty containers are more likely to be ignited from cigarette sparks than full gas containers!

The things we say - the things we think - the things we hear - words!  Images!  Perceptions!  It all matters!  Everything has consequences!  Speak!  But speak with this thought in mind!  Hear!  But hear with this thought in mind!  Think!  But think with this thought in mind!  As Ayn Rand said regarding language:

Concepts represent a system of mental filing and cross-filing, so complex that the largest electronic computer is a child’s toy by comparison. This system serves as the context, the frame-of-reference, by means of which man grasps and classifies (and studies further) every existent he encounters and every aspect of reality. Language is the physical (visual-audible) implementation of this system.

Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition - not of communication, as is usually assumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept formation - a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication ; the necessary pre-condition of communication is that one have something to communicate. (This is true even of communication among animals, or of communication by grunts and growls among inarticulate men, let alone of communication by means of so complex and exacting a tool as language.) The primary purpose of concepts and of language is to provide man with a system of cognitive classification and organization, which enables him to acquire knowledge on an unlimited scale; this means: to keep order in man’s mind and enable him to think.

Ayn Rand

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology