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A New Way of Thinking

I was reading Toolkits of the Mind in the May/June 2015 issue of the MIT Technology Review and I came across the following:

Software developers as a species tend to be convinced that programming languages have a grip on the mind strong enough to change the way you approach problems—even to change which problems you think to solve.

I struck out the last part of this extract because I'm a bit uncomfortable with the notion that the language dictates what we think about it.  On the other hand, it may well be that the language we use -- differential equations, economics, visualization, diplomacy as examples -- may well be a constraint that that keeps us from understanding and potentially resolving some of the intractable issues of the day -- the Middle East, income and capability inequality, race relations.

If all one knows is arithmetic then all one can resolve is issues that can be described in arithmetic.

I think of some of the issues I face, most often the need to modify human behavior (sometimes my own), and think that maybe I'm using the wrong language.

Most successful programming languages have an overall philosophy or set of guiding principles that organize their vocabulary and grammar—the set of possible instructions they make available to the programmer—into a logical whole.

Posted on Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 07:56AM by Registered CommenterJames Drogan | CommentsPost a Comment

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