What does Physics have to do with Linguistics and Anthropology?
Since my first talk at an American Anthropological Association meeting about 18 years ago, “The Origin of Speech in a Deep Structure of Psi,” I have taken flack from my own linguistics colleagues, when noticed at all, for what they perceive as some kind of misplaced physics envy on my part. Perhaps even anthropologists here have thought the same. If we all stay in our nice, neat little academic boxes, we can continue going deeper and deeper into a single thing — but we won’t be a part of the move to hook up again, to bring things back together holistically. Like Benjamin Whorf, I have a long-running simultaneous interest in linguistics, modern physics, and Native America, all stretching back over 25 years. As with him, my interest in physics is simple: language and culture manifest in reality, so linguistics and anthropology must explain its concepts in terms of reality, even though it’s the background. Over the 20th Century, our background has changed: physicists’ conception of reali
