Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf (April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American fire prevention engineer who worked in the insurance industry. As an avocation, he studied linguistics. 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. This principle has frequently been called the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity.
He became a member of the Theosophical Society in America on February 2, 1940, joining the Hartford, Connecticut Lodge. Mr. Whorf's son Ray also joined the TSA at the Ojai Valley Lodge on September 2, 1940. Ray married Torre Perkins, the daughter of James S. Perkins, who served as TSA President from 1945-1960.
Online resources
Articles
- A Notable Theosophist: Benjamin Lee Whorf by John Algeo
- The Mind of Benjamin Whorf by David Lavery
- Language, Mind and Reality by Benjamin L. Whorf
Further reading
- Carroll, John B. (ed.) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956) x, 278 pp.