Καλησπέρα σε όλους,
αυτές τις μέρες διαβάζω το βιβλίο "Antifragile" από τον Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Διαβάζοντάς το, βρέθηκα σε μια αναφορά στο παρόν θέμα για το οποίο δεν είχα ακούσει προηγουμένως, ή, αν είχα ακούσει, δεν το συγκράτησα. Κάνοντας μια αναζήτηση στο διαδίκτυο, πέτυχα το συγκεκριμένο νήμα, θεώρησα ότι θα βρείτε ενδιαφέρον τα όσα διάβασα και σκέφτηκα να σας παραθέσω εδώ το εν λόγω απόσπασμα. Είναι στην αγγλική γλώσσα. Απ' όσο γνωρίζω το βιβλίο δεν κυκλοφορεί, ακόμη, σε ελληνική μετάφραση. Το σχετικό απόσπασμα βρίσκεται στην τελευταία παράγραφο, αλλά το παραθέτω από την αρχή του υποκεφαλαίου ώστε να μην χαθεί, όσο γίνεται, ο ειρμός του συγγραφέα.
Το απόσπασμα:
On the Necessity of Naming
We know more than we think we do, a lot more than we can articulate. If our formal systems of thought denigrate the natural, and in fact we don’t have a name for antifragility, and fight the concept whenever we use our brains, it does not mean that our actions neglect it. Our perceptions and intuitions, as expressed in deeds, can be superior to what we know and tabulate, discuss in words, and teach in a classroom. We will have ample discussions of the point particularly with the potent notion of the apophatic (what cannot be explicitly said, or directly described, in our current vocabulary); so for now, take this curious phenomenon.
In Through the Language Glass, the linguist Guy Deutscher reports that many primitive populations, without being color-blind, have verbal designations for only two or three colors. But when given a simple test, they can successfully match strings to their corresponding colors. They are capable of detecting the differences between the various nuances of the rainbow, but they do not express these in their vocabularies. These populations are culturally, though not biologically, color-blind.
Just as we are intellectually, not organically, antifragility-blind. To see the difference just consider that you need the name “blue” for the construction of a narrative, but not when you engage in action.
It is not well known that many colors we take for granted had no name for a long time, and had no names in the central texts in Western culture. Ancient Mediterranean texts, both Greek and Semitic, also had a reduced vocabulary of a small number of colors polarized around the dark and the light—Homer and his contemporaries were limited to about three or four main colors: black, white, and some indeterminate part of the rainbow, often subsumed as red, or yellow.
I contacted Guy Deutscher. He was extremely generous with his help and pointed out to me that the ancients even lacked words for something as elementary as blue. This absence of the word “blue” in ancient Greek explains the recurring reference by Homer to the “wine-dark sea” (oinopa ponton), which has been quite puzzling to readers (including this one).