On 02/03/15 15:50, clipka wrote:
> In your case, "Zwischendinge" would be more likely to mean the time
> periods between world-shaping events than those events themselves.
> However, even more likely it might mean the smaller events leading from
> one such world-shaping event to another. Either would be considered
> inappropriate use of the word though, because neither time intervals nor
> events are "Dinge" (things).
> 

Thanks for that. Effectively, it would seem that the writer of the
report has as incomplete an understanding of German as I have - I can
get by, but a serious intellectual conversation would be beyond me. I
have a feeling that she, a recent graduate, was trying to show off her
erudition.

> 
> BTW, "Merkwelt" isn't a common German word at all; it's a highly
> techical term in Psychology, and while it does refer to a mental "image"
> of the world, it's not that high-level mental image of our world and
> society (that would be "Weltbild"), but the low-level mental image of
> the physical world generated directly from our senses.
> 
> For instance, Virtual Reality goggles change the Merkwelt of the user by
> supplying fake visual input; at the same time, they also change our
> Weltbild by introducing the notion that we might be living in an
> entirely fake world without even knowing.
> 

I was aware of the word 'Weltbild' but had wrongly assumed that it and
Merkwelt were interchangeable. I should have realised that German is too
precise a language to allow for redundancy. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

[a wiser] John

BTW Thanks also to Ingo and Thomas
-- 
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children

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