IN-PERSON New Schools of Thought

Abstract

This study aims to enlighten students and scholars about the unscientific and racist nature of commonly accepted and circulated knowledge on Indo-European (IE) language classification. This research posits that IE theory was crafted with racist and imperialistic impulses; it was neither scientific nor “discovered”. It exhibits that existence of IE language category relies on a polygenist assumption that it considers only white-skinned people as humans. According to Hebrew Bible, people spoke a common language before the Great Flood; once they built the Tower of Babel, languages dispersed. The Hermeticism idea or the supposed teachings of Hermes Trismegistus dictates that the ancient monotheism and language of Adam as well as the original wisdom and knowledge survived through his son Seth, and it passed to Enoch from Seth’s lineage. Hermetics believe that Noah carried this pre-flood knowledge to the post-flood period before humanity dispersed on earth. Christians have long believed that they were the carriers of antediluvian wisdom and knowledge. Since, premodern European polymaths, including, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, near univocally accepted that the Great Flood happened in 2340 BCE, they were convinced that they could trace the fragments of not only the long-lost knowledge but also the original language or its fragments. The monogenist and universal quest to find fragments of original language was hijacked by polygenist, racist and imperialist thinkers, who not only crafted imaginary IE language category but also casted Europeans as the descendants of oldest language, knowledge, and wisdom.