Through The Language Glass; Summary #2

In the first chapter, “ Naming the Rainbow” the author Guy Deutscher tells us about the theories from Homer and Darwin how people from different countries interpreter Homer and Darwin’s theories in certain ways. We Americans interpreted that Darwin’s theory of evolution is that all life is related and even we have a common descent ancestor. We also interpreted and understand his theory about survival of the fittest and natural selection. Even Hitler had his own way of interpreting Darwin’s theory and believed the theory about natural selection. This was one of the reasons why he chose to form a separation between Germans and other nationality and created a war among those who were different then them. Other countries, might disagree with Darwin’s theory of evolution and Homer’s epic. For example “Homer’s epic are for Gladstone nothing less then ‘the most extraordinary phenomenon in the whole history of purely human culture.’” (Deutscher 26). William Ewart Gladstone was a religious man; who draws information from Homer’s description of colors to a radical form. “What they did not say thus led him to remarkable discoveries about the cultural world of the ancient Greeks. The most sticking of these insights concerned Homer’s language of color.”(30 Deutscher). This explains that language creates the way people think and see things, like colors.