language
We are suspended in language such that we don't know what is up and what is down ..Niels Bohr
Words evolved from the gestures and sounds earlier organisms used to communicate. Adjectives, verbs and nouns are stored and processed in their own particular parts of the brain. Some brain regions retrieve them. Others compile them into thoughts and utterances. Pictorial languages are processed in different parts to phonetic ones.
Spoken words spread their complex meanings like seeds or viruses which format and program their recipients extending the contents of our mind outside of our bodies. Writing extends ideas even further, passing on the blueprints of culture and technology beyond the memories of present generations.
A small part of our thinking is symbolised in words and yet words dominate our thoughts. They have the most social, scientific, personal and legal significance. Emotional, tactile, pictorial and other sensory images are less noticed.
And yet we can't know everything in words or understand and live life from words alone. The world does not fit into such small spaces. And the words that seem so stable and defined in dictionaries become slippery and unpredictable in the wild.
Once we have a word for some thing we become imprisoned within its limitations and less able to see the world in new ways. We often expect abstract nouns like time, space, justice, bravery, and spirituality (the list is endless) that spring up within a language to refer to something real that actually exists outside of our thoughts. We tend to be loyal to ideas, brand names and doctrines.
Modern languages enable complex society. But they are limiting. They bring perceptual biases that constrain the way we think. Their nouns divide the world into separate objects and their verbs cast it into past, present and future tenses. These very tools that enable us to conceptualise and communicate otherwise inexpressible ideas also limit us within their world of three dimensional space moving through time. They limit what we can talk about and even restrict what we see.
Some of the wisdom and clarity of infancy returns with old age and dementia as we forget our complex stories and see things more like they are once again. The mind and body exercises also allow us to go beyond the limitations of words.
copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 11/06/11
