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On Vision & Being Human 11: Signs, Symbols, Language & Vision

20/5/2015

We now turn to the issue of language as one of the most distinctive human behaviours, and one which we might think of as completely natural, arising quite easily from our increased intelligence. However, it is to be noted that among primates, as intelligence increases so do Machiavellian strategies in which only expensive and expressive signals are trusted. By contrast, language production is cheap and easy, and thus the question of how language could have evolved becomes a genuinely challenging one. A wide range of magical theories are often invoked to explain our faculty for speech, but more subtlety is needed to understand how unprecedented levels of inter-individual trust could have come about to permit such an inexpensive communication system to prevail.

This chapter mainly outlines 'the problem of language' and only offers some solutions, more of which will come later. It should be noted that those who are particularly attached to some of Chomsky's ideas, or McKenna's 'mushrooms of language' hypothesis may not entirely enjoy what follows!

We are accustomed to thinking of language as the representationally human trait, a behaviour whose origin is the focus of probably the largest number of magical theories. While the form and structure of human language is most certainly unique among the animals, there are observations emerging that some primates, as well as elephants and dolphins, may possibly utilise systems of linguistic communication of one form or another, and this alone can lay to rest some of the crazier theses, since if the magic (whatever form it is supposed to take) was acting upon humans, it must also have been acting upon these other mammalian species too, a situation which looks more unlikely the more species we discover may be using verbal signals.

A simpler and more elegant explanation is that these behaviours have evolved, and in this light we gain our first insight, that in the world of signal communications, all possible systems of language are not the same, for there are signs and there are symbols.

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Enacted Epiphanies and the Birth of the Humanist in Minoan Art

2/5/2015

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For several years, one of my avenues of research has revolved around the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete, which has so far culminated in a treatise on the Minoan Epiphany as a visionary ritual. These researches are greatly enriched by visits I and my partner take to the archaeological sites and museums of Crete, and it was on such a journey in late 2013 when I had a flash of insight into how the perennial humanist concerns of Greek art may have had their formative moments. This essay, which is generally longer and more image-heavy than my usual Archaic Visions fare, is what followed. I have a vague plan to publish my Minoan Epiphany research in late 2016: this article is likely to form the introduction to that text.

One of the major themes in the history of Aegean art, from its emergence out of the Greek Dark Ages at the end of the ninth century B.C. to its fullest flowerings in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, is appropriately summarised by Boardman, in the introduction of his comprehensive study on the subject, as:

“…its rapid but deliberate development from strict geometry admitting hardly any figure decoration, to full realism of anatomy and expression…”

and its emergence into an authentic expression of what Perry has termed:

“…the humanist spirit that characterized all aspects of Greek culture. They made the human form the focal point of attention and exalted the nobility, dignity, self-assurance and beauty of the human being.”