Culture changes everything because culture contains everything,
in the sense of things that can be named, and so what can be
conceived. Wittgenstein implied that what cannot be said cannot
be thought. He meant by this that language relies on a series of
prior agreements. Such grammar has been shown by anthropologists
to underpin the idea of any on-going community, not just its
language, but its broader categories, its institutions, its
metaphysics. And the same paradox is presented: how can anything
new ever happen? If by 'happen' we only think of personal and
historical events, we miss the most crucial novelty—the way that
new things, new physical objects, devices and techniques,
insinuate themselves into our lives. They have new names which
we must learn, and new, revolutionary effects. It does not
always work like that. Resistance is common. Paradoxically, the
creative force of culture also tries to keep everything the
same. Ernest Gellner said that humans, taken as a whole, present
the most extensive beha