Human Dev Symbols, the Mind, and the Essay

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Human Dev

Symbols, the Mind, and the Animal State

In Chapter 7 of Maps of Time, David Christian (2011) discusses how human language is built not only of "icons" and "indices," which are types of recognition, correlation, and communication that many organisms from bacteria to dogs can use, but primarily of symbols -- a more complex and higher-order level of communication (p. 172). This is only part of a larger discussion on the development of human history, however it is worthy of consideration simply as its own advancement and unique feature. An understanding of how language is a definitive feature of humanity, and of the implications of a division between man and nature, creates valuable insights for understanding human development.

As explained by Christian (2011), certain associations can be made by many organisms between similar or concurrent experiences in a way that might appear to be symbolic learning or communication, but that falls short of true symbolism.

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This is certainly not the first time it has been asserted that language -- true language, not the rudiments of communicating about concrete objects -- has been said to separate man from beast. This is, however, one of the more subtle yet rigidly codified explanations for this assertion; there is a strong construct that allows for animal communication and carefully describes the difference between such communication and human language, which can incorporate groups or classifications of these lower-order communication aids into otherwise unrelated symbols (Christian, 2011). In a sense, then, it is the abstraction of the symbols of language that makes them uniquely human, as only man can conceive of himself as abstractly independent of the natural world.

The philosophizing on the very real and concrete "life" of a carbon atom that Primo Levi (1975) provides is one very unique example of this common attitude of abstraction. Even while Levi (1975) is noting the degree to which.....

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