language and culture
no impediment to scientific thinking on the part of Israelis, and Greek was no obstacle to the inductive reasoning of the pre-Socratic philosophers nor did it later prevent Neoplatonists from using Greek to promote their philosophical ―flights of fantasy.‖ All languages employ figurative expressions, have poetry, use language in singing, and have a great number of literary forms or genres – from genealogies to prayers. One language-culture may emphasize the development and use of particular genres, e.g. epic poetry or animal folktales, which another language culture may seldom employ and may even strongly reject. But the people of any language-culture have sufficient imagination and experience to understand how the people of another language-culture may rightly differ in their behavior and values, since the behavioral differences within a single culture are usually greater than those which exist between cultures.
