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there's alot that could be said about the basic idea behind the op, but i hesitate to lay things out as i see them because it'd derail the thread i suspect. i'm not really interested in abstract questions of rhetoric (degree of "belief" in what you're saying & questions of persuading others devolve onto classical matters of rhetoric: belief drops away, replaced by voice, which is what would communicate belief as the latter is an inward state which admits of no particular access for others. trick is that an adequately developed voice can be made that would convey a convincing illusion of belief...which is one reason plato for example was so pissy about the sophists...but that's another matter.)
i'm more interested in the assumptions that link categories to their putative referents in the world, particularly more experience-distant ones (why is there a universe and not many? most likely because of the effects of the word universe, yes?)
there's lots of directions this sort of thing can head toward, from cognitive geography through philosophy of science through ontology of the social world--but it's all kinda technical and i'm not sure that the thread was set up with anything like that in mind.
but why do we assume there is a single entity called the universe? why do we assume there is a single entity called nature?
if words mediate our relation to our environments and if we are imbricated in those environments and so act on them in ways shaped fundamentally by the effects of this mediation, then how could language possibly not be a force in nature?
unless you think human creations somehow hover over nature, so that it is like a park you go visit---nature is where there's alot of trees or grass for example & stops where the parking lots begin.
but who thinks that way?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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