Language problem that gives rise to a misleading phrase

A newspaper seller and readers in Mombasa on April 22, 2015. PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Although I am an avid reader of science fiction and of literature on the latest facts on science and technology, I have never seen any scientific affirmation that there exists such a place as “the literal centre of the world”.

  • Contrariwise, as Tweedledee used to tell Tweedledum, science affirms that the universe has neither a centre nor a border.

Where would you say is “the literal centre of the world”? I culled the italicised words from a columnist on page 16 of the Standard on Sunday of July 31. Wrote he: “Kenya has been at the literal centre of the world in the last two years.” If that is offered as a scientific truth, then Kenya is truly “the centre of the world”.

Here, indeed, the adjective literal makes Kenya the real axis around which everything revolves even in the Hawkingian universe—though I still fail to see how a cosmic body can revolve “around” Kenya, a phenomenon possible only if either Kenya’s international borderline were marked by a deep cosmic hole or Kenya were a sphere surrounded by a ditch as deathly as the one around Torquilstone Castle in the novel Ivanhoe.

Yet—although I am an avid reader of science fiction and of literature on the latest facts on science and technology—I have never seen any scientific affirmation that there exists such a place as “the literal centre of the world”. Contrariwise, as Tweedledee used to tell Tweedledum, science affirms that the universe has neither a centre nor a border.

“THE WORLD”

If so, what can the term “the world” mean? The earth? The solar system? The Hawkingian universe? But, even if we restricted ourselves to these systems, our planet would be far from being the “centre of the world”. The sun would still enjoy the pride of place in the solar system. But a cosmologist as keen-minded as Stephen Hawking would never speak of “…the centre of the world…”

Yet, in Kenya, a “leader of thought” tells us directly that Kenya is the centre of the world, not merely figuratively, but even “literally”. Writes he: “Kenya has been at the literal centre of the world in the last two years”.

Here, it is clear that language is the problem.

What our friend wants to say is not that Kenya is “the literal centre of the world” but that Kenya is “literally the centre of the world”.

The first makes Kenya the objective and universally undisputed centre of the world. The second makes Kenya such a centre only as a figure of speech, only idiomatically.

The question is: if our planet has never enjoyed any cosmic privilege, how can any spot on it or any segment of its ball-shaped surface become “the centre” of that world?

What modern cosmologists like Hawking affirm is that neither our universe nor any other has a centre and an edge.

The Standard commentator tells his readers that Kenya achieved that universal privilege at the centre of the universe two years ago. Really? If so, why didn’t any Kenyan newspaper “splash” it across page one?

I ask because, if such a story had landed on my desk as a “scoop” when, at different times, I served as chief sub, managing editor and editor-in-chief of newspapers in Dar es Salaam, Kampala and Nairobi, I would later have treated everybody down-table to an ever-rotating round of beer.