english thought

Very thoughtful and well articulated answer Vulcan. hopefully his request isn't more along the lines of "Western vs.Eastern" thinking...

Guns Germs and Steel is a book by Jared Diamond that nicely describes the drivers of differences between western and non western cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

milo

Hi, rajasekhar!

'English thought' is a term invented by Simon N. Patten, Ph. D., Professor of Political Economy, Wharton School of Finance and Economy, University of Pennsylvania, in 1899.

When he wrote an essay with that title, Professor Patten intended to record the events in English history up until the time of writing to illustrate how the English nation steered itself through international events. He labelled the process of that steering "English thought", not because it was particularly English in style, but because it was undertaken by persons who were involved in decision making within those events, and produced certain chains of subsequent events.

More recently, authors in America, England, and India have made something they call "English Thought" into some kind of elitist thinking method. The idea is that since England at one time conquered most of the world, their method of thinking must be superior to the methods of thinking of other nations. In general these authors have ignored the value of the style of thought inherent in other languages and only focused on the English victories of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries as examples of the 'superiority' of thinking in English.

For certain, the language one speaks determines the way one thinks about things. And sometimes we wonder about the thought processes of other peoples who do not speak English as their first language. But to say one language is "better" from the point of view of the results of thinking in that language just reveals a huge bias in the speaker. The English language is idiomatic, and hence difficult to learn since we mean what we say, but don't say what we mean in order to express it.

For example, "Lovely weather for ducks!" is a humorous way to say, "It's raining, and I don't particularly like it, but what can one do about it? Nothing."

Here's an example of one South Asian author's writing about English thought:

"You know that an Englishman thinks him-self_(sic) quite the first person on earth, and a Frenchman is equally sure that the French are the greatest people, so also the German and the American and others."

Often, these authors promote the so-called English way of thinking about things as somehow superior. Sometimes, in the manner of a complaint based upon historical events, they consider it inferior, and even sometimes label the language as inferior.

But of course, it is not 'superior' or 'inferior', it is merely English. And the reason that people from England or the English-speaking Americas think the way they do is due to the language they speak, not because it is somehow a better form of thought. To think otherwise is an elitist fantasy.

Mark