In the Tower of Babel story, a large number of people, all
speaking the same language, are working together harmoniously to
construct a magnificent structure. Then God decides, for reasons
not given in the story, to terminate the project by suddenly
introducing a multiplicity of languages, each spoken by a
distinct subset of the people. The result is that what was
originally a united group breaks up into a number of groups who
go off to form different nations. This suggests the following
thought experiment. Suppose a large number of people are
randomly distributed in a large room. Assume they varied greatly
with respect to race, physical appearance, age, occupation, and
ability in various respects. Further assume that each is fluent
in exactly one of five different languages, and that they are
free to intermingle at will. How are they likely to be grouped
after perhaps an hour? It seems obvious that clusters would be
formed, each consisting of people speaking the some language.
Groups might be further partiti