A Search for the Primordial Concept
Like many of you, I grew up with a fascination with dictionaries. I wondered about such questions as whether if someone knew and understood all the words in a truly unabridged and complete dictionary, would they know everything that humans could know at a given time? And, standing this question on its head, since a dictionary defines my word of interest using other words, does this mean there was a primordial word (a word that existed from the beginning of human language) and, if so, what was that original word? I believe that the answer to this last question lies with prehistoric man.In a series of studies published in the 1950s, L. S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria developed a set of ideas that was to become well-known as the cultural-historical theory of the higher psychological processes. Currently different aspects of this theory are enjoying increasing popularity among developmental psychologists.[1]
A basis of this theory was that concept formation in prehistoric man was used as an aid to memory long before concepts were used to allow language development. Concept development led to a wealth of concrete names for all sorts of objects stored in a prodigious memory.[1]
I have suggested that the primordial concept or word necessary for other words to have meaning would, of necessity, have existed when concept formation began. Let me illustrate this. Assume that one of the very first concepts formed by man represented a particular herbivore dinosaur and another a carnivorous dinosaur (such as the man-eating Siats meekerorum). What was the primordial concept? I would suggest "truth" or "accuracy"—errors were a matter of life and death. Like other of the many concepts in the prodigious memory of primitive man, such as concepts for edible and poisonous plants, deviations from truth or accuracy as to the meaning of these concepts were immediately punished. Offspring probably learned to live in the world of their parents by imitating the behavior of their parents (as the offspring of higher-order mammals are observed to do) forming their own unique memory bank of concepts. And the concept truth or accuracy was always there as a background presence as this prodigious memory was developed—it was the primordial concept necessary for other words to have meaning.
The path to language development using words, either spoken or written, in a structured and conventional way, was a long and tortuous path. And what happened to truth along the way? I don't need to tell you. The reward/punishment structure often made truth seem burdensome. My personal list of human activities that illustrate the compromised nature of truth would include: propaganda, politics, advertising, and religions that worship and follow the edicts of a god that seems always to tell its followers and their leaders to do what they want to do beforehand.
In fact, I believe a strong case could be made for departure from truth as the identity of the much-debated concept of "original sin" that plays such an important role in the Abrahamic religions. For those of you familiar with the Genesis Chapters 2 and 3 account of the Garden of Eden, recall that the critical event leading to mankind's expulsion from the garden is the Serpent's accusation of God of lying to Adam about whether he may eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Acting on the serpent's misinformation, Adam and Eve eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil leading to their expulsion from the Garden.
At present there seems to be a world-wide crisis of trust as people around the world are exhibiting distrust of leaders and institutions by rising up against them. Perhaps the world is more prepared than it has been in its history since the development of language to rescue the primordial concept, truth, from those activities listed above that dishonor truth and promote false beliefs. How might we do this?
The human activities that compromise truth are powerful and will not be easily persuaded to value truth. An important recent development with the potential for allowing large numbers of people around the world access to accurate information that may be used to find truth among the false data about their natural and artificial worlds is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is built on a very radical idea—a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Please do not dismiss lightly the potential of Wikipedia and do listen to the TED Talk by Jimmy Wales entitled "The Birth of Wikipedia." [2]
The appeal of sources of accurate information, such as Wikipedia, will be immensely enhanced by what I believe is the impending and inevitable collapse of the Trump Ponzi scheme in which each present failure to deliver on a campaign promise is an ever-more extravagant promises of future deliveries. This collapse will have world-wide repercussions including a widespread desire for accurate information.
NOTES:
1. René Van Der Veer, "The Anthropological Underpinning of Vygotsky's Thinking", openaccess.leidenuniv, 1991.
2. The information cited above, according to Wikipedia rules, requires no attribution. The source of the information about Wikipedia, however, should be watched by as many people as possible: Jimmy Wales, "The Birth of Wikipedia", TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript, TED.com.html
