Brady’s Laws
From several decades of university teaching, I have distilled the following truths and coded them as BRADY’S LAWS:
(a) Context is practically everything for determining meaning. (b) You can only learn new things in terms of what you already know. (c) Ethnocentrism is inevitable but can be controlled to some degree by learning to recognize it. (d) Imagination is as important to human life as breathing. (e) Meaning is in theory unlimited–culture shapes meaningful categories out of that pool of possibilities. (f) All peoples have a religion. (g) The range of Western industrialism and high tech now extends into outer space, leaving no part of the globe untouched by its influence. (h) There is no such thing as a primitive language. (i) There is no longest sentence. (j) Nothing in language or culture ever occurs alone–everything is what it is only in relation to something else. (k) Part of a system does not a system make. (l) Simple technology in a society does not equal simple-mindedness. (m) In general, all human beings have the same cognitive and linguistic capabilities. (n) Race, language, and culture vary independently.