Speculative thought

One names thought speculative the fact of drawing them holding and outcomes from a thing if it were true, without to regard it as true.

A recent invention

The speculative thought seems to appear at the Greek philosopher S of Antiquity. It will forge little by little Western mentality and will reveal in its languages a whole implements intended to treat it more conveniently: forms “if… then… if not… ”, verbal forms of the subjunctive and the conditional intended to create a certain distance between that about which one speaks and a possible different thought that reserves the speaker on this subject , and who is voluntarily not mentioned.

The speculative thought is the form par excellence doubt and prudence , and is for this little appreciated reason of the totalitarian modes (one remembers that the Greece of the colonels had prohibited the teaching of the not-Euclidean geometry ).

The language, paramount factor

It is difficult in certain existing languages to express a speculative opinion if the needs for survival historically did not make pressure with its appearance. According to the ethnologists, the problem meets in certain African dialects where the doubt is expressed only in extremely specific cases. The training of a language having the conditional and subjunctive verbal forms is then difficult, but more no problem once arises such a language controlled using examples and of practice.

Literature

Robert Merle made in his book a gifted animal of reason the assumption of novelist that the language used by the Dauphin S does not know this concept, which forever be necessary for them. Most of the difficulty of communicating with them is related to this problem. “I do not include/understand the well if . The if annoys me”, says the dolphin Fa .

the academician Érik Orsenna devoted to the subject a book: knights of the subjunctive, where a dictator tries to make remove this verbal form. See also Novlangue, Babel 17.

Case of the language hopî

The hopi has three verbal forms: one concerning the events which one was the direct witness, one second for the brought back events as observed by a known person in whom one puts all her confidence, and a third for any other brought back event. That constitutes as many elements of distance. The collective memory of Hopis did not keep trace of any period of dictatorship in their history.

Humor, and science fiction

It is allowed to wonder whether the Humor and the Science-fiction did not play a big role in the development of the speculative thought.

humor in general takes cantilever the practices of thought, and directs them in a very different way (see Dictionnaire of the Devil), without to claim to take them with the serious one. It thus introduces strongly the concept of distance of the speaker on the covered subject. The characteristic of humor is often its Ambiguïté.
the science fiction shows quite as distant by nature with reality.

See too

fantastic Realism
Planet (re-examined)
Catholicism and speculative thought]

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