Science Quote by Edward Sapir

Sapir is making a characteristically modern demand: if our age prides itself on scrutiny, then our language, art, and argument can no longer coast on inherited forms that only feel true. They have to be defensible. The word “engine” is doing heavy lifting here. He’s not talking about expression as ornament or vibe; he’s imagining a built device, designed under pressure, tested for leaks, expected to perform. That metaphor quietly imports the authority of industry and laboratory into the messier realm of culture.

The subtext is both aspiration and anxiety. “More and more critical and analytical” reads like praise, but it also suggests a trap: once a society learns to doubt, it can’t easily return to mythic, ambiguous, or purely emotive modes without feeling intellectually dishonest. “Logically defensible at every point” is an extreme standard, almost impossible for ordinary speech, let alone poetry or politics. Sapir isn’t naive about that impossibility; he’s dramatizing the tension his own work sits inside. As a linguist-anthropologist writing in the early 20th century, he’s watching modern science become the prestige language of truth while older rhetorical styles start to look like superstition in nicer clothing.

Context matters: Sapir’s era is intoxicated by scientific method and shaken by social upheaval. His line captures the period’s drive to professionalize meaning itself - to make expression sound like proof. It’s persuasive because it flatters the modern reader’s self-image (we’re rigorous; we’re grown-up) while quietly warning that “rigor” is becoming a cultural gatekeeper, deciding which kinds of human experience count as legitimate.