Figuring things out

Language is fun.  Do our words convey what we are really experiencing?  Are words connected to, or related to, reality?  For example, linguists say that there is probably no word we use now that did not begin its life as a metaphor ; as a colourful figure of speech ; not ‘literal’ or ‘concrete’ at all.

We’re all familiar with the word sunbeam ; also we all know, when we think about it, that a beam is a plank of wood.  But no-one believes that the sun has planks of wood radiating from it.  And then there’s one of my favourites – understand.  Who really believes that, to understand that 1 + 1 = 2, we must either stand it under us or we must stand under it?  It must have been a mind-boggling metaphor when it first appeared from the quill of a scribe.  It was a word that first needed to be explained to us, and then became a word that we had to think about when we used it ourselves.

But that’s the point.  A metaphor may be so arresting, so staggering, and also so unlikely that it becomes popular quite quickly.  Thereafter, its use becomes a habit ; and then we forget that it is a metaphor ; we take it as ‘literal’.  At this stage, the word is something that is no longer thought about consciously.  Meanwhile the original literal word is oft forgotten completely.

We do a lot of thinking automatically, without realising it.  We do a lot of thinking without consciously thinking about anything.

Imagine I hear a section of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata that just happens to be playing on the radio.  As soon as I become aware of the sound, I say, “Oh, yes, that’s the Moonlight.”  Almost instantly, I have formed in my mind a figuration of the sound.  And I do not stop to think what a curious thing this figuration is.

For what is really happening is something like this.  First the radio emits some vibrations in the air ; then the vibrations fall into my ears.  What I hear in my consciousness ought to be just a noise.  But it isn’t just a noise ; I recognise it as noise I have heard before, so it is has meaning ; it is really a sound.  And, not only that, but I recognise the sound as a particular piece of music – the Moonlight.  All this happens in an instant.

But, in order to recognise the noise, I must have referred it to my memory.  And when my memory has located it, it informs me what the sound means – or do I infer the meaning?  Whatever, there is a lot of thinking going on here.  We can guess how much thinking by imagining hearing a little-known sound ; we have to comb our memory to try to recognise it ; and sometimes it eludes us.  But, in the case of a familiar sound, our complex thinking has become automatic through practice.

So, merely to be able to use a word like sunbeam, we have to think about it ; and merely to recognise a piece of music, we have to think about it.  But that thinking is so sublime that we do not even know that we are doing it.

It can be interesting to reflect just once in a while, as we gaze upon a familiar object such as a teacup, that we have done a lot of thinking simply in order to see it – to make a picture of it in our minds.