This brings up the issue, “to what extent does language determine thinking?”
http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html
I struggled through most of Korzybski’s “Science and Sanity” decades ago. But I later found that Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt were paying attention to his ideas in the 40s. So some of this stuff was incorporated into science fiction I was reading in grade school without my knowing anything about it.
But I found the words and concepts of atheism and agnosticism in those books though no adults ever used them. So using different words and thinking different thoughts from other people became the norm for me.
In a way I think the idea of Vulcan Culture is one of the greatest concepts of science fiction and it may be confronting our society now. I don’t think advanced science is possible without civilization but what we currently call culture may be somewhat inimical to science. This global warming issue may be the best example. The Laws of Physics do not care about culture or language. They are going to work the way they work. We have to conform to them because they are not going to conform to us. A scientific Culture where most people can think accurately about the workings of reality would be very different from any existing culture. All of this talk about “critical thinking” is just so much rubbish.
So if we screw up the planet to the point of causing starvation that is just too bad. Our language and inaccurate thinking will not help us solve the problems no matter what we “believe”.
psik