Some thoughts concerning Language as a Scientific Topic

Language is about the most important topic when it comes to understanding humans and the history of our species. This is a very active scientific field in many dimensions. I think it is of utmost importance, to keep the scope of thinking wide-open because many important issues are not fully covered yet.

When trying to understand the nature of human thinking, for me it is very important to capture its dual mode of operation. On the one side,we operate within the potential of a powerful neural network, as do most other highly developed species. At the same time, we have available something like digital computer-like machinery in our brain, which makes humans superior to all other animals. To me, this “machinery” seems to be an emulation of a digital system on our biological neural networks. This emulation process is possible and quite good understood.

Cultural Nationalism in India

The concept of Nationalism is linked to the idea of sovereignty and hence; it has to be associated to the principle of self-determination. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued that nationalist movements were dependent on ethnicity, language and culture. These were the basis of the demand for statehood. While this stood true for most nationalistic movements, Hurst Hanum of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy remarked that in this era, the notion of self-determination was used by groups to divide rather than unify territory. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire can be used as an example.

It was at the peak of colonialism in the mid-19th century that the colonised world witnessed the rise in nationalistic sentiments with the emphasis on the idea of a common language, religion, ethnicity etc. While the western idea of nationalism aims to set up a uni-nation, uni-culture dictum, nationalism operates on different principles in a multi-national, pluralist context (for the purpose of this paper, the term pluralist and multi-nationalist will be used interchangeably). Nationalism had a dual role to play in the last century through the many nationalistic upheavals leading to decolonization of most of Latin America, Africa and Asia.