........ September 11, 2001, at 8:46 A.M., a
hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower
of the World Trade Center in New York. At
9:03 A.M. a second plane crashed into the
south tower. The resulting infernos caused
the buildings to , the south tower
after burning for an hour and two minutes, the
north tower twenty-three minutes after
that. The attacks were masterminded by
Osama bin Laden in an attempt to intimidate
the United States and unite Muslims for a
restoration of the caliphate.
9/11, as the happenings of that day are now
called, has set off debates on a vast array of
topics. But I would like to explore a lesserknown
debate triggered by it. Exactly how
many events took place in New York on that
morning ........ September?
It could be argued that the answer is one.
The attacks on the two buildings were part of
a single plan conceived by one man in service
of a single agenda. They unfolded ........ a few
minutes and yards of each other, targeting
the parts of a complex with a single name,
design, and owner. And they launched a
single chain of military and political events in
their aftermath.
Or it could be argued that the answer is two.
The towers were distinct collections of glass
and steel separated by an expanse of space,
and they were hit at different times and went
out of existence at different times. The
amateur video that showed the second plane
closing in on the south tower as the north
tower billowed with smoke makes the twoness
unmistakable: while one event was frozen in
the past, the other loomed in the future.
The gravity of 9/11 would seem to make this
discussion frivolous to the point of impudence,
a matter of mere "semantics," as we say, with
its implication of splitting hairs. But the
relation of language to our inner and outer
worlds is a matter of intellectual fascination
and real-world importance.
______ "importance" is often hard to
quantify, ........ this case I can put an exact
value on it: 3,5 billion dollars. That was the
sum in a legal dispute for the insurance
payout to Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of
the World Trade Center site. Silverstein’s
insurance policies stipulated a maximum
reimbursement for each destructive "event."
If 9/11 comprised a single event, he stood to
receive 3,5 billion dollars; if two, he stood to
receive 7 billion. In the trials, the attorneys
disputed the applicable meaning of the term
event. The lawyers for the leaseholder defined
it in physical terms (two s); those for
the insurance companies defined it in mental
terms (one plot). There is nothing "mere"
about semantics!
Adapted from: PINKER, Steven. The Stuff of
Thought . New York: Penguin, 2007. p. 1-2.