As part of integral thinking we can conceptually divide language into modes. The modes represent the semantic fields of our paradigm of thought and their relation to the world. Language is a tool, can be used in many ways and was subjected to evolution through time.
Is language a tool for describing the world, or a medium through which the world appears at all?
Scientific language
How do we use language ? A Materialist view
From a materialist perspective, scientific language is instrumental, not expressive or revelatory.
- It aims at precision, repeatability, and operational clarity
- Meaning is tied to measurable phenomena, not inner experience
- Words function as labels for processes, variables, or relations
Example: “Force equals mass times acceleration”
The sentence does not describe lived experience. It compresses observations into a predictive formula. In this view, language is a tool for modeling reality, not accessing truth directly. Its success is judged by prediction and control, not by meaning in a symbolic or existential sense.
Limit: Scientific language deliberately strips away ambiguity, metaphor, and affect. What it gains in clarity, it loses in depth of meaning.
symbolic language
Symbolic language points beyond itself. Its meaning is not exhausted by literal reference.
Characteristics:
- Polysemic (one symbol, many meanings)
- Context-dependent
- Often irreducible to paraphrase
- Connects concepts, emotions, cosmology, and social order
Examples:
- The cross: suffering, salvation, cosmic order
- The circle: eternity, unity, cycles, the sacred
- “Light” in many traditions: knowledge, being, divine presence
In symbolic language, the word is not a label but a threshold. Meaning unfolds through interpretation, ritual, or repetition.
Archaic languages: how do they work?
Archaic languages often operate pre-analytically, before the sharp split between subject and object. Key features:
Language as action: Words do not describe reality, they do things.
Example:
- Vedic mantras are effective only when spoken correctly
- Biblical “Let there be light” is performative, not descriptive
Language is causally embedded in the world. Concrete abstraction: Abstract ideas are expressed through physical processes.
Examples:
- Time described as flowing water
- Truth as straightness or firmness
- Being as breath, wind, or fire
Abstraction emerges from embodied experience, not from definition. No strict separation between metaphor and reality
In archaic thought:
- The sun is not “like” a god, it is a god
- Naming establishes essence, not representation
Language participates in ontology. Collective, not individual meaning
Meaning is stabilized by:
- Myth
- Ritual
- Repetition
- Social memory
There is little concern for originality or personal expression. Language maintains cosmic and social order.
Summary
- Scientific language: control, prediction, reduction
- Symbolic language: resonance, depth, excess of meaning
- Archaic language: participation, efficacy, world-making
A materialist framework privileges the first. Human cultures historically lived mostly in the second and third. The tension between them is not accidental. It reflects different answers to a basic question: Is language a tool for describing the world, or a medium through which the world appears at all? Investigation of language, media, religion and art through those lenses can reveal the answers.