Carroll, J.B. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality; Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Published jointly by Technology Press of MIT, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London. As cited in: Bergman, J. 2011. "Benjamin Lee Whorf: An Early Supporter of Creationism". in: Acts & Facts. 40 (10): 12-14.
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Whorf became increasingly concerned about the supposed conflict between science and religion... He wrote a 130,000-word manuscript on the subject, described as a book of religious philosophy in the form of a novel... Completed in 1925, [it] was submitted to several publishers and as promptly rejected by them... Another, briefer manuscript prepared about this time [was]... “Why I have discarded evolution.” An eminent geneticist to whom it was submitted for comment made a very courteous reply, starting with the admission that, although the manuscript at first appeared to be the work of a crank, its skill and perceptiveness soon marked it as otherwise, but continuing with a point-by-point rebuttal of Whorf’s arguments... Whorf’s reading led him to believe that the key to the apparent discrepancy between the Biblical and the scientific accounts of cosmology and evolution might lie in a penetrating linguistic exegesis of the Old Testament. For this reason, in 1924 he turned his mind to the study of Hebrew.

— Carroll

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Whorf became increasingly concerned about the supposed conflict between science and religion... He wrote a 130,000-word manuscript on the subject, described as a book of religious philosophy in the form of a novel... Completed in 1925, [it] was submitted to several publishers and as promptly rejected by them... Another, briefer manuscript prepared about this time [was]... “Why I have discarded evolution.” An eminent geneticist to whom it was submitted for comment made a very courteous reply, starting with the admission that, although the manuscript at first appeared to be the work of a crank, its skill and perceptiveness soon marked it as otherwise, but continuing with a point-by-point rebuttal of Whorf’s arguments... Whorf’s reading led him to believe that the key to the apparent discrepancy between the Biblical and the scientific accounts of cosmology and evolution might lie in a penetrating linguistic exegesis of the Old Testament. For this reason, in 1924 he turned his mind to the study of Hebrew." in the context of "Carroll, J.B. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality; Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Published jointly by Technology Press of MIT, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London. As cited in: Bergman, J. 2011. "Benjamin Lee Whorf: An Early Supporter of Creationism". in: Acts & Facts. 40 (10): 12-14." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Benjamin Lee Whorf" (Quotes about Benjamin Lee Whorf) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Benjamin Lee Whorf

About Benjamin Lee Whorf

Benjamin Lee Whorf (April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer. Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that because of linguistic differences in grammar and usage, speakers of different languages conceptualize and experience the world differently.