The Symbologics of Language
In Form and Function
by Stephanie Casillas
Imagine the birth of man’s written language. Through the shadows of the millennium, I see a small child kicking a small rock into the well of a shallow cave, her beautiful little eyes focused firmly on the patterns of light and dark on the cavern floor. She lifts her eyes, noticing for the first time the flat wall that rises as a monument before her. Her mind lights a primal urge within. She bends down, and rubs a hand in the red clay, and holds her dirty palm up to her eyes, realizing the tool that she never noticed before. Propelled in purpose to the wall, she imprints her open palm onto the surface. Stepping back to admire her work, she smiles. In this elemental act, she says, “I am Me, I am Here, and I am Forever.” Another child soon enters the cave, to find the first still staring at her creation. The second child stands beside the first and studies the print. Knowingly, the second bends down, rubs his hand in the clay, and instinctively repeats the procedure. It is the dawn of written language, and the evolution of symbolic thinking has begun.
A perfect lesson, illustrating teacher and student immersed in infinite understanding and communication, the symbolic language at its simplest and highest form, effortless and intuitive, intrinsically understood. No word or action required. As our symbol sets deconstruct into the complex of multiple textures, curves, lines, and points, with infinite functions of infinite forms, then the perfect lesson becomes imperfect. Infinite understanding and communication erode as the symbolic language increases in complexity and action, in form and function. It is in this, that active teaching must bridge the unnatural to the natural, to technically curve the language set to the student, instead of twisting and contorting the student to the false premise of a fixed and intractable symbol set.
Symbologics breaks the bond of form and function, form defined as symbolic language, and function being the action desired of learning. The technique is to simplify form by degrees, one degree at a time, bending the learning curve required to achieve the desired action, and increasing efficiency of learning. Once the desired action is achieved, the symbol set form is returned, one degree at a time, in reverse order of simplification or substitution, without regard to time, until the student achieves the desired action of learning in the original symbol form.
As simplicity of form, or symbol set, approaches the natural,
the function, or learning curve, approaches 0.
As complexity of form, or symbol set, approaches the unnatural,
the function, or learning curve, approaches infinity.
The guiding principles for Symbologic substitution and simplification are that any one thing can only be understood from the point of view of another, and that the only measure of truth is change. By substituting and simplifying the form of written language by these principles, the student functions and learns more efficiently. This is the philosophy of Symbologics.
Symbolic substitution and simplification is creativity itself, the very definition being imagination between the senses and beyond the senses. Symbol sets must be understood as fluid and changeable. They must be, by definition, to have evolved in the first place. There is no right or wrong way to perform symbolic substitution and simplification-only effective and ineffective.
In the world of Symbologics, the symbol set itself is the barrier to learning and creativity. One simple example is the word “snow”. The Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, because their very survival depends on that understanding. If a class of kindergardeners are asked to create their own word for “snow” using the symbol set of circle, square, and triangle, each result would be unique. One student’s symbol would mean “deep”, because on a Winter’s trip, their car got stuck in the snow. Another student’s symbol would mean “slippery”, because every time she tried to snowboard, she fell. Another symbol would mean “wet”, because his snowman melted into a watery puddle soon after he made it. All of these examples are more precise than the original form, and more natural to the student. In this example, the word “snow” is evolved by symbolic substitution, its function more creative, descriptive, with deeper meaning, and freed from the bonds of the original form.
It is not the symbol set that is important, but the task at hand. The Egyptians built the Great Pyramids with mathematical symbols likening sticks and birds. Written language symbol sets are merely a tool to be honed, shaped, bent, reinvented, metaphored, colorized, resized, 3D’d, twisted, broken apart, all for the purpose of increasing efficiency of learning and enhancing creativity for both teacher and student.
Sensory exchange is an integral part of symbolic substitution and simplification. In Symbologics, all senses are equal and interchangeable. An example is a visually challenged student, who reads braille. Have her touch her hand to heat, and then touch an increase in depth of braille lettering, to represent heat. Have her touch her hand to cold, and then touch a decrease in depth of braille lettering, to represent cold. Then, when she reads a story about a village marketplace, with all the myriad of foods to sample and taste, she can feel a 3D spectral vision of the experience, with the added sense of hot and cold foods, or sweet and spicy, or smooth and prickly. All this from one simple sensory exchange.
Symbologics is the window into the window of learning. Einstein’s E=MC2 is physics distilled, and also man’s greatest metaphor. To a biologist, it speaks of life, and to an astronomer, the fire and substance of the heavens. To me, the equation is the music of our mind. One man’s science is another man’s poetry. They are all truth, symbol sets of knowledge, equal and interchangeable.
Learning must be viewed as a scientific endeavor, breaking apart the atom of knowledge. The metaphor of one symbol set is to be applied and implemented in another. DNA is nature’s symbol set, as Darwinian evolution is the Symbologics of the natural world. Just as Einstein bends time in relativity, Symbologics can bend and warp the fabric of learning to reveal the solutions to limitless unknowns. As Newton’s Laws apply to Physics, actions and reactions apply correspondingly to learning. The beauty is that through symbolic substitution and simplification, sensory exchange, and interdisciplinary exchange, the possibilities for learning are truly infinite.
When I was a young mother, I would sing and tap my hands on the back of my daughters, in a melodious massage of form and function, and love. In time, that developed into the Kinderfiddle Method for Children, a kinesthetic and interactive evolution of the same idea, that evolved into symbolic simplification and substitution and sensory exchange, that evolved into a grand interdisciplinary view of education. They are all simply fractals of one truth.
In my mind’s eye, I return to the cave of my paper’s origin. This time, many seasons have passed. The cave is empty, the inhabitants and their restless minds had moved on long ago. There, on the cave wall, still lives the handprint of my imagination. Around it now are countless overlapping prints in varying sizes, pointing to multiple directions, some low, some high. A beautiful symphony of community, of life, of art, of love, and of humanity’s quest to say, “We are Here, and We are Forever.” All we need to understand the writing on the wall is to imagine the hand that created it.