Symbolic thought is at the heart of what it is to be human. Our unique ability to think beyond the immediacy of what our eyes see and our ears hear, and to put that against the context of a deeper realm of understanding, insight, and imagination is the defining characteristic of our species. Carson (2002) overviews the evolution of this capability from the simple expressive vocalizations and mimicry of the earliest humans, through the inception and growth of complicated and abstract thought systems and then writing systems, to our contemporary high-water mark of reflective capability.
One of the great leaps in human communication/cognition, Carson states, is the creation of alliterative devices such as simile, synecdoche, metonymy, and perhaps most importantly, metaphor. Long viewed by the likes of Aristotle as “unnecessary ornaments” to communication, it was eventually put forth that metaphor instead is a pivotal instrument in the interactive process of creating meaning and association in the world as we perceive it (p. 9). As an inherently imaginative process – the mind holding “two incompatible images […] together and try[ing] to make them equivalent” (p. 11) – metaphorical thought served as a lynchpin in a mind that “imposed itself on the world, and creatively adapted and shaped it” (Hawkes, 1972, p. 43) rather than passively accept an external “truth.” The human mind does this not only because it simply can, but also “because metaphorical thought and utterance sometimes embody insight expressible in no other fashion.” (in Ortony, p. 34).
This level of non-literal meaning of course abounds in every level of human cultural systems. Not only language, but art, music, architecture, and even science. Try as it may to eschew figurative language, it still must rely on “models, theories, thought experiments, idealizations, and other conceptual heuristics” in order convey ideas and “help the learner ‘see’” the observed truth in the absence of first-hand observaton (Carson, p. 16). The danger is, then, that this figurative model becomes “reified” – given as an example is the planetary model of atomic structures – as the actual truth, rather than “props designed to aid the imagination of the learner to understand what the presenter has gleaned from experience” (p. 16).
This is critically important for a teacher to keep in mind as they prepare for a classroom. It is not enough for an instructor to simply pour the concepts – figuratively – out on the students’ desks and say, “there, now figure it out.” Under such a naïve design, no matter how carefully a student studies and observes this raw data strewn about, they will not be able to reach the “correct” conclusion. While the hindsight of science’s myriad discoveries may seemobvious to our savvy, learned minds, in many cases they “actually run… counter to common sense and common observation” (p. 17). Such models are not simple, are not obvious, and in fact took “the concerted effort of generations of geniuses to create them in the first place” (p. 17). How, then, can a student be expected to do what generations of humans could not? They can’t.
As teachers, it is our job to assist students in acquiring and understanding as broad and as deep an array of schemata as they are able. This is not a process of mere dumping a load of knowledge onto their laps and telling them to learn it, but an active, reciprocal relationship of ensuring a student has “a broad range of mental experiences” shared by society, and just as importantly, can both find its relevance and interconnection with the other branches of human knowledge (p. 20). Powerful ideas, as we’ve seen in the epoch-defining motifs such as evolution, relativity, calculus, etc. can influence entire generations. But that can only occur if the minds of an era are capable of breaching the imposed containment of each discipline from the other, and make those metaphorical connections that have so permeated our species’ history.
References
Carson, R. (2002). Semiotics and symbolism. EDCI 552 Coursepack. Montana State University,
Northern Plains Transition to Teaching, Bozeman, Montana.
Hawkes, T. (1972). Metaphor. London: Methuen.
Ortony, A. (ed.)(1986). Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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