Tag: meaning

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- Language - Religion Human Nature

The Beauty of Language

One of the most fundamental characteristics of human nature is a soul’s desire to explore reality and search for meaning in the universe – the mind longs to understand.  Language is the medium by which we can think about and describe our understandings of reality.  Over some previous posts, elements of the language of science were discussed, desirable features to help express meaning.  But this is not the only language.  Poetry expresses meanings, relationships, and underlying truths of reality with a different kind of precision and clarity that science can’t.  The language of religion, too, though not always keeping with the same type of unambiguity that science has, nonetheless is rational and consistent, albeit a different kind.  It arouses noble sentiments, empowers and inspires the reader, and reaches the deepest roots of human motivation through its appeal to a human being’s innate attraction to beauty.

Knowing that words, thought, and actions are all linked, what types of thoughts and actions can the languages of poetry and religion develop within someone?

The human being’s ceaseless search for meaning and truth is borne of an attraction to beauty.  Contentment comes from discovering beauty within the existence of a thing, a concept, a relationship, an experience, a melody, an action.  Is not part of the drive of science or philosophy the beauty – the order, symmetry, subtlety, simplicity – reflected in descriptions of reality?

Beauty, like all concepts, can be interpreted within a framework.  Consider a materialistic interpretation of reality.  Our innate attraction to beauty would have to come from the evolutionary process – certain characteristics increasing fitness and thus creating attractive impulses.  As language developed, these impulses created the concept of beauty.  This interpretation reduces beauty to a source of pleasure – whether manifest as crude physical or as sophisticated intellectual; as a stimulus for action; as a collective culture of excitement and thrill.  Regardless of its form, it is controlled by ego and unable to transcend this limited earthy existence.

Under the assumption that the human soul exists and that it lasts beyond this brief association with a body, then attraction to beauty becomes a main force that governs the journey and evolution of the soul towards perfection – the beauty of perfection.  The pleasures and experiences of this type of beauty can be used as indicators of spiritual progress.

In this context, how can we view the concepts of love, knowledge, unity, justice?

Categories
- Language - Religion - Science Discourse Knowledge

Language and Civilization

Reality has physical and spiritual dimensions.  Indeed, the world civilization that beckons humanity is one that will achieve a dynamic coherence between these two requirements of social life.  If reality is more complex than just the physical universe, then a limited description would be inadequate to fully explore and understand it.  In recent times, because of the relative success of the field of science, particularly physics, the prevailing thought is that science is adequate to explain reality.  The assumptions implicit in this belief are that 1) reality is purely physical or material; 2) science, alone, can explain the mysteries of this purely material reality.  But, again, these are just assumptions.  There are alternatives as well – equally plausible – that have been advanced throughout this blog.  1) Reality includes levels beyond matter – including social dynamics, human consciousness, and spiritual reality; 2) if reality includes both physical and spiritual components, then both science and religion are needed to understand its mysteries; 3) understanding of reality does not equal reality itself – understanding evolves.

With the understanding that words influence both thoughts and actions, and with the above assumptions in mind – that science and religion are two complimentary systems of knowledge that, over time, gain understanding of our complex reality – the topic of language takes on paramount importance, particularly the language of science and the language of religion.  The next few posts will explore this topic.

Language, for the purposes of discourse, must be rich enough to explore issues at a depth that accompanies action.  It is the medium through which we communicate observations, create models of reality, articulate theories of dynamics, explore sentiments, describe the world’s operations, and even prescribe relations and behaviors.  Crucially, it allows for shared understandings to exist between one individual’s mind and others’ minds.  Otherwise, collective knowledge about the objective reality that exists outside of our minds would be tremendously difficult to generate, and our connections to each other would be extremely limited – to the point where we wouldn’t really have society.

To advance civilization is to construct a new social reality, and social reality emerges through language – words are the building blocks of civilization. In other words (pun intended), social reality is the operational expression of words and the meanings of them that society has agreed upon.  However, it is important to note that language is itself a social construct – a component of social reality.  Thus, like all social constructs and conventions, it can be changed.  And a change of language becomes a change of civilization.  Therein lies the power of discourse.

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