Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own beliefs and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware.

Understand: we can never really experience what other people are experiencing. We always remain on the outside looking in, and this is the cause of so many misunderstandings and conflicts.

The intuitive and the rational, the inside perspective and science, can easily coexist.

It led to a profound disenchantment with Christianity, which had meant so much to him as a young man.

The reality of the Pirahã could only be seen from within and from participating in their culture.

With these ideas, he lost his faith in Christianity itself, and finally left the church.

But what kind of objectivity is it when the researcher’s perspective is tainted by so many assumptions and predigested theories?

He could only imagine that spreading the Gospel and converting them to Christianity would completely ruin their culture, which had shaped itself so perfectly to their circumstances and made them so content.

The conclusion that he drew from this, one that would provoke much controversy within the field of linguistics, is that culture plays an enormous role in the development of language, and that languages are more different than we have imagined.