The Power of Ideas I love original ideas, if they are intelligent and useful. They have a unique power in the world to make things happen. Not long ago, I ran across an intriguing idea while reading a volume entitled The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. The book covers a lot of ground and my purpose isn't to review it. But in Chapter 14 the author tells about a remarkable man named Seymour Papert, computer scientist, teacher and writer who had a great interest in how children learn. He believed a child should start with a subject of interest and then follow wherever it led, rather than being confined to rigid subject-matter classifications. (My apologies to Papert for this thumbnail explanation.)Under the subhead 'The Unity of Knowledge,' Talbott says: "The pursuit of a single interest, if allowed to ramify naturally, can lead to all knowledge. Papert cites his own adult experience with the study of flowers, which led him to Latin, folk-medicine, geography, history, art, the Renaissance, and, of course, botany."Now, there is a powerful idea: The pursuit of a single interest can lead to all knowledge. Reading about this idea brought up the memory of how I had mastered English: simply by learning how to use commas. One summer, decades ago, after my freshman year at college, I settled down with the McMillan Handbook of English to master commas—that was all.I had done some decent writing that first year, earning a “B” and an “A” in the two semesters of English, but I stumbled over commas. I really didn’t know how to use them. Since I wanted to be a writer, I knew I had to learn. And I did. In studying the handbook section on commas, I came to understand why certain clauses, phrases and words were set off by commas, and why others weren’t. In learning how to use commas, I mastered a much bigger subject: language itself. Of course I didn’t exhaust an inexhaustible subject, which English is.But from a practical standpoint, I saw for the first time how the language was put together, how it worked. There were all those introductory phrases and nonrestrictive clauses and parenthetical elements, and I had to understand them because their flow was largely controlled by commas. As I studied the "rules" of using commas, language opened itself to me and I could see its orderly inner workings.My study had unity. It was confined to commas—and I did learn how to use them—yet I learned so much more by necessity. Suppose I had settled down that summer to “learn English.” I wouldn’t have known where to begin—the subject is too vast—and I probably would have lost interest and learned little. I succeeded through the unity of my effort. Of course at the time I had no thought of unity and mastering English and all that. I just wanted to become skillful with commas. It was only those many years later, reading Talbott's book, that I gained an insight into what I had done without realizing it. (No credit to me, I was just groping along.) Of course, as the years went by, I never stopped learning new things about the magnificent English language.But think of it: The study of one subject can lead to all knowledge. My study of commas, of course, didn’t lead to all knowledge, but it did result in an understanding of an immense subject—a completely unexpected (and unsought) outcome. So, based on my experience with commas, perhaps we can say:The mastery of a small but essential part of a big subject can result in gaining insight into the whole subject. If this is true, what an economy of effort it makes available to us. And I think it could be applied to almost any field of study.

I love original ideas, if they are intelligent and useful. They have a unique power in the world to make things happen.

Not long ago, I ran across an intriguing idea while reading a volume entitled The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. The book covers a lot of ground and my purpose isn't to review it. But in Chapter 14 the author tells about a remarkable man named Seymour Papert, computer scientist, teacher and writer who had a great interest in how children learn. He believed a child should start with a subject of interest and then follow wherever it led, rather than being confined to rigid subject-matter classifications. (My apologies to Papert for this thumbnail explanation.)

Under the subhead 'The Unity of Knowledge,' Talbott says: "The pursuit of a single interest, if allowed to ramify naturally, can lead to all knowledge. Papert cites his own adult experience with the study of flowers, which led him to Latin, folk-medicine, geography, history, art, the Renaissance, and, of course, botany."

Now, there is a powerful idea: The pursuit of a single interest can lead to all knowledge.

Reading about this idea brought up the memory of how I had mastered English: simply by learning how to use commas. One summer, decades ago, after my freshman year at college, I settled down with the McMillan Handbook of English to master commas—that was all.

I had done some decent writing that first year, earning a “B” and an “A” in the two semesters of English, but I stumbled over commas. I really didn’t know how to use them. Since I wanted to be a writer, I knew I had to learn. And I did.

In studying the handbook section on commas, I came to understand why certain clauses, phrases and words were set off by commas, and why others weren’t. In learning how to use commas, I mastered a much bigger subject: language itself. Of course I didn’t exhaust an inexhaustible subject, which English is.

But from a practical standpoint, I saw for the first time how the language was put together, how it worked. There were all those introductory phrases and nonrestrictive clauses and parenthetical elements, and I had to understand them because their flow was largely controlled by commas.

As I studied the "rules" of using commas, language opened itself to me and I could see its orderly inner workings.

My study had unity. It was confined to commas—and I did learn how to use them—yet I learned so much more by necessity. Suppose I had settled down that summer to “learn English.” I wouldn’t have known where to begin—the subject is too vast—and I probably would have lost interest and learned little. I succeeded through the unity of my effort.

Of course at the time I had no thought of unity and mastering English and all that. I just wanted to become skillful with commas. It was only those many years later, reading Talbott's book, that I gained an insight into what I had done without realizing it. (No credit to me, I was just groping along.) Of course, as the years went by, I never stopped learning new things about the magnificent English language.

But think of it: The study of one subject can lead to all knowledge. My study of commas, of course, didn’t lead to all knowledge, but it did result in an understanding of an immense subject—a completely unexpected (and unsought) outcome. So, based on my experience with commas, perhaps we can say:

The mastery of a small but essential part of a big subject can result in gaining insight into the whole subject.

If this is true, what an economy of effort it makes available to us. And I think it could be applied to almost any field of study.

The Doom of Whom

“Whom are you?” he said, for he had been to night school.—Saki

Whom is an honorable old word that has been in the English language since its beginnings. It is also a worn-out old word that is begging to be retired. I think we should accommodate it. Of course we have pretty much retired it from spoken American English. Now we need to expunge it from the written language, where some old-fashioned diehards are propping it up, feeding it intravenously, and keeping it tottering along.

It’s probably impossible to say why, but somewhere along the years we stopped needing whom. We found that who has no trouble doing double duty serving as both the nominative and the objective case, and we Americans use who in both cases all day long in conversation.

They may do it differently in other parts of the English-speaking world, but in the United States people almost never use whom in speaking. Once in a long while you hear it, usually in a speech rather than in conversation, and whenever you do, it sounds stilted. The speaker seems to be putting on airs or striving awkwardly to be “correct.”

Whom sticks out—it is no longer a natural word in spoken American English. Its use is still pretty widespread in the written language, but even there, I’m glad to say, more and more good writers are using who exclusively. Here are some examples from the Internet of who being used in the objective case. Notice also that the first three examples end superbly with prepositions (a separate matter I will take up in another essay).

“Do you know who you're talking to?”—Thomas L. Friedman, AC, 10/5/00

“…nobody was exactly sure who we were at war with.”—Sam Francis, Web

“Remember who you are dealing with.”—Carol A. Valentine, email newsletter

“We know precisely who is hoaxing who, and we are hardly going to be quelled by such a fatuous and pathetic attempt at a reply.”—Diane Harvey, Web

[Incidentally, I had not yet learned how to do HTML when writing this piece, so I didn’t collect the links for these examples and can’t provide them now.]

The next example is beautiful. Under the system that is dying, it would contain five ugly whom’s. Instead, it has 10 triumphant in-your-face who’s.

“The emotional and territorial issues – that are the result of sexual relationships – of men and women being guarded and jealous concerning who is sleeping with who, who belongs to who, who is ‘looking’ at who, who is flirting with who, who is wearing what in front of who, etc.” –Karen De Coster, on lewrockwell.com

The reader who is offended and even shocked by the idea of using who in both the nominative and objective cases should be aware that language is a living thing. As the years go by, it changes. Word meanings shift. New words enter the language and old ones drop out.

For example, we used to think we needed two words to indicate “at this place” and “to this place.” We said, “I am here,” but, “Come hither.” As time went by, for reasons that probably nobody could explain, we began to use “here” for both “at this place” and “to this place.” “Hither” withered and gradually dropped out of the language. The same thing happened with “there and “thither” and “where” and “whither.”

And it is now happening with who and whom. One word is doing the work of two. As I said, whom is already gone from spoken American, making only an awkward appearance at long intervals, like a relative who shows up at a family reunion wearing last year’s fashions. Consider the following:

“In my study of the neoconservatives, it was easy to find out whom in Washington they liked and whom they didn’t. To find out whom they didn’t like, no research was required.”—Karen Kwiatkowski

Notice how each whom brings you up short. You don’t expect it because you never hear it in conversation. It’s almost like a word from a foreign language inserted into English. At least Kwiatkowsky used her whom’s correctly

I say that because one of the problems with whom is that even good writers often have surprising difficulty figuring out how to use it. They use whom when it should be who even under the present fading system. The same is true of whomever, which is in the same category as whom. The following examples are from articles posted on the Internet. In each case, who or whoever should have been used.


“…spiteful neighbors, employees, former spouses, whomever will gain the power to report any disliked person.”—Paul Craig Roberts, Web

“His mother, Irma, said her son took the rap for high-ranking officers, whom she said were ‘all guilty.’ ”—CNN on the Web

“Meanwhile, back home, voters and reporters should be asking both Bush and Kerry much more specific questions about the draft and its possible return during the term of the next president, whomever that may be.”—Dave Lindorff, Web

“Why should we care whom we were, when the future is rolling down the tracks straight at us and this wild ride will just keep getting better.”—Michael Peirce, lewrockwell.com

“All of this has contributed to a Bush bubble, and political commentators are once again diminishing the chances of the Democratic presidential nominee, whomever it will be.”—David Corn, Web

“Whomever made those investments almost certainly had at least some foreknowledge of the 9/11 catastrophe.”—Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com

“…I do believe that more Americans could tell me whom the finalists are….”—John Troyer, CounterPunch

I have a lot more examples of this kind of thing, but I’ll stop here. The point is made that under the present system even top-quality writers are unable to figure out whether to use the nominative or the objective. Whom and whomever served us well for centuries, but their place in history is rapidly coming to an end. Let’s cut them loose and let them fade into the past, where they belong. And let’s don’t be timid and apologetic about it. Let’s come right out and boldly use who and whoever exclusively.