Morin convincingly argues for the important role played by the social practice he calls “standardization” in the evolution and stabilization of language. It is not that any particular symbolic system is inherently better or worse as the foundation of human communication, but rather that certain systems, within certain contexts, may more readily cultivate online repairing of communication. This argument appears to help solve the “puzzle of ideography.” However, by underscoring the centrality of practice within communication it actually removes the expectation that particular symbolic systems can be inherently better than others, thereby undercutting the foundational assumption upon which the matter was puzzling in the first place, namely, that ideographs are closer to the reality they depict than spoken or written words. To the extent that we continue to find the “puzzle of ideography” puzzling, we are in effect reminded of the continued allure of positivistic thinking regarding human psychology.
The “puzzle of ideography” flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time uniquely colored by positivist and even utopian thinking. It was hoped that we would come to see and capture the world and our place therein as it is in reality; to the degree that we would become truly “objectively scientific.” The effects of this current of thought on the development of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and even the humanities have been well-documented, and have been collectively presented as involving a set of “naturalistic” epistemological assumptions (e.g., Daston & Galison, Reference Daston and Galison2010). Some hoped that the advance of science would free us from the shackles of intergroup differences and divisions, and unite us under the shared banner of a common humanity. Various attempts to develop ideographic languages arose from this spirit (e.g., Bliss language, Neurath's international picture language). To the extent that we believe ideograms to be somehow closer to the reality they symbolically depict than their linguistic counterparts, and to somehow retain that meaning apart from a community of practitioners, we are cultivating a naturalistic epistemology that assumes ideograms to be “brute facts” (to borrow the language of Taylor, Reference Taylor1985) that can exist outside of social interaction.
The assumption that ideographs depict things in the world somehow more directly, or immediately, than do written or spoken words is an echo of the broader, long-standing hope that – if used correctly – symbolic systems, including language, can directly capture reality. This hope blossomed in the Enlightenment and flourished in the nineteenth century. As our faith in the universal language of science increased, the use of the universal language of Latin declined and the use of local languages in science spread; a widely used language practice was replaced with the widely held expectation that we would come to know, and to represent, the world as it is in reality, unadulterated by cultural variation. This expectation of direct contact with objective, universal reality would come to take various forms over the centuries – for example, as famously seen in the hopes of the logical positivists. Each new incarnation of this expectation would be met with arguments for its folly – as in Wittgenstein's famous rejection of logical positivism. Wittgenstein's private language argument attests to the inherently social, praxiological aspect of language, and rejects the idea that symbols are connected with nonsymbolic reality, or even have symbolic meaning, outside that social practice. Thus, as naturalistic schools of thought spread, so too have emerged schools of thought that can be described as falling under the umbrella term “interpretive social science,” which do not share these naturalistic assumptions. These approaches understand the symbolic dimensions of human life as requiring different methods of study than those found in the natural sciences. For example, in defining cultural psychology as a form of interpretive psychology, Bruner (Reference Bruner1990, p. 118) argued it to be the study of “the rules that human beings bring to bear in creating meanings in cultural contexts. These contexts are always contexts of practice: it is always necessary to ask what people are doing or trying to do in that context.”
The expectation that we can directly capture reality within symbolic depictions thereof is nevertheless very much alive in our current, technological age – perhaps even more so than ever before. For example, Bredekamp (Reference Bredekamp, Bredekamp and Krois2011) writes about the “principle of disjunction,” whereby the more natural and “real” such scientific images appear, the more constructed and artificial they are (see also, Bredekamp, Schneider, & Dünkel, Reference Bredekamp, Schneider and Dünkel2008). As images are increasingly created by technological devices, we have come to think of ourselves as neutral observers of reality, whose “objectivity” is assured to the degree that our tools remove our “subjectivity”; to the degree that objective facts replace subjective interpretation. “Objectivity preserves the artifact or variation that would have been erased in the name of truth… objectivity is blindsight, seeing without inference, interpretation, or intelligence” (Daston & Galison, Reference Daston and Galison2010, p. 17). Modern technologies, such as neuroimaging, promise to bring the viewer closer to the phenomena they depict – they claim to present reality in an unmediated manner. As to be expected, objections have been raised to such claims. For example, Fleck (Reference Fleck1935) argued that even the most scientific and “objective” of images is ultimately meaningless without the social practices of the communities that use them (e.g., medical doctors, research scientists). Morin's piece is a powerful argument for the centrality of practice for language, and an important reminder that our attempts to symbolically capture reality, regardless of the forms they may take, are matters of practice – even ideographs. Perhaps what remains truly puzzling, is our expectation that in the case of ideography it would be otherwise.
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Morin convincingly argues for the important role played by the social practice he calls “standardization” in the evolution and stabilization of language. It is not that any particular symbolic system is inherently better or worse as the foundation of human communication, but rather that certain systems, within certain contexts, may more readily cultivate online repairing of communication. This argument appears to help solve the “puzzle of ideography.” However, by underscoring the centrality of practice within communication it actually removes the expectation that particular symbolic systems can be inherently better than others, thereby undercutting the foundational assumption upon which the matter was puzzling in the first place, namely, that ideographs are closer to the reality they depict than spoken or written words. To the extent that we continue to find the “puzzle of ideography” puzzling, we are in effect reminded of the continued allure of positivistic thinking regarding human psychology.
The “puzzle of ideography” flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time uniquely colored by positivist and even utopian thinking. It was hoped that we would come to see and capture the world and our place therein as it is in reality; to the degree that we would become truly “objectively scientific.” The effects of this current of thought on the development of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and even the humanities have been well-documented, and have been collectively presented as involving a set of “naturalistic” epistemological assumptions (e.g., Daston & Galison, Reference Daston and Galison2010). Some hoped that the advance of science would free us from the shackles of intergroup differences and divisions, and unite us under the shared banner of a common humanity. Various attempts to develop ideographic languages arose from this spirit (e.g., Bliss language, Neurath's international picture language). To the extent that we believe ideograms to be somehow closer to the reality they symbolically depict than their linguistic counterparts, and to somehow retain that meaning apart from a community of practitioners, we are cultivating a naturalistic epistemology that assumes ideograms to be “brute facts” (to borrow the language of Taylor, Reference Taylor1985) that can exist outside of social interaction.
The assumption that ideographs depict things in the world somehow more directly, or immediately, than do written or spoken words is an echo of the broader, long-standing hope that – if used correctly – symbolic systems, including language, can directly capture reality. This hope blossomed in the Enlightenment and flourished in the nineteenth century. As our faith in the universal language of science increased, the use of the universal language of Latin declined and the use of local languages in science spread; a widely used language practice was replaced with the widely held expectation that we would come to know, and to represent, the world as it is in reality, unadulterated by cultural variation. This expectation of direct contact with objective, universal reality would come to take various forms over the centuries – for example, as famously seen in the hopes of the logical positivists. Each new incarnation of this expectation would be met with arguments for its folly – as in Wittgenstein's famous rejection of logical positivism. Wittgenstein's private language argument attests to the inherently social, praxiological aspect of language, and rejects the idea that symbols are connected with nonsymbolic reality, or even have symbolic meaning, outside that social practice. Thus, as naturalistic schools of thought spread, so too have emerged schools of thought that can be described as falling under the umbrella term “interpretive social science,” which do not share these naturalistic assumptions. These approaches understand the symbolic dimensions of human life as requiring different methods of study than those found in the natural sciences. For example, in defining cultural psychology as a form of interpretive psychology, Bruner (Reference Bruner1990, p. 118) argued it to be the study of “the rules that human beings bring to bear in creating meanings in cultural contexts. These contexts are always contexts of practice: it is always necessary to ask what people are doing or trying to do in that context.”
The expectation that we can directly capture reality within symbolic depictions thereof is nevertheless very much alive in our current, technological age – perhaps even more so than ever before. For example, Bredekamp (Reference Bredekamp, Bredekamp and Krois2011) writes about the “principle of disjunction,” whereby the more natural and “real” such scientific images appear, the more constructed and artificial they are (see also, Bredekamp, Schneider, & Dünkel, Reference Bredekamp, Schneider and Dünkel2008). As images are increasingly created by technological devices, we have come to think of ourselves as neutral observers of reality, whose “objectivity” is assured to the degree that our tools remove our “subjectivity”; to the degree that objective facts replace subjective interpretation. “Objectivity preserves the artifact or variation that would have been erased in the name of truth… objectivity is blindsight, seeing without inference, interpretation, or intelligence” (Daston & Galison, Reference Daston and Galison2010, p. 17). Modern technologies, such as neuroimaging, promise to bring the viewer closer to the phenomena they depict – they claim to present reality in an unmediated manner. As to be expected, objections have been raised to such claims. For example, Fleck (Reference Fleck1935) argued that even the most scientific and “objective” of images is ultimately meaningless without the social practices of the communities that use them (e.g., medical doctors, research scientists). Morin's piece is a powerful argument for the centrality of practice for language, and an important reminder that our attempts to symbolically capture reality, regardless of the forms they may take, are matters of practice – even ideographs. Perhaps what remains truly puzzling, is our expectation that in the case of ideography it would be otherwise.
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