Aristotle and the Greeks believed that every form here on earth was a replica of a "perfect form" in the heavens. Every chair was just a variation of "The Chair", every rock was an imperfect version of "The Rock". These perfect forms were templates by which every replica was made.
Sounds pretty silly? Now as silly as you might think.
During a video called "The History of the World in Two hours", a discussion came up about how one of early man's great leaps forward was cave drawings. Why? Not because it tells us about their lives and not because of their great artistic abilities. But because it proved that these men (and women) had learned to recognize symbolic identity. Symbolic thought. Symbolic speech (which was required for language to develop). They could imagine and create a symbol of a man, a symbol of a mammoth. This style of thinking is something we take for granted, but it is what sets us apart from animals.
When I think about the Greek philosophy of the forms, I wonder if it could be translated psychologically. How do you know when you look at these two images that they are both chairs?
How do you distinguish between a bed and a chair? Between a chair and a couch? We can all do it because we can recognize the forms. Deep in our psyche, we understand the symbolic form of "The Chair". And we can learn to recognize when a piece of furniture is a replica of "The Chair" versus "The Bed" or "The Couch".
While listening to Dr. Rosenthal's study guide in preparation to take the NCE (National Counselor's Exam), I started thinking about Piaget's description of symbolic thinking in a child's pre-operational stage (spanning from 2-7 years).
The major development of this stage is symbolic thinking. Children begin to give labels to objects they see in everyday life. They also develop what are a known as schemes for recognizing new objects. For example, in the early part of this stage, language skills are developing very rapidly, a child may learn that the four-legged creature running around the house is symbolized by the word "dog." Upon seeing a cat, which is similar to a dog because it walks on all fours and is a household pet, the child may label it as a dog. This is because the cat falls into the same scheme as the dog (i.e. walks on all fours and is kept as a pet). Of course, as a child grows older, she will realize the differences between cats and dogs. (https://www.msu.edu/~compeaua/piagettheory.html)
I don't believe that the ideas of symbolic thinking and schemes are mutually exclusive concepts but rather are intricately linked. Remember that it is our schemes that allow us to distinguish between the chair and the couch in the same way that a child learns to distinguish between a cat and a dog. Our schemes are the rules we use to model the symbolic forms by which we understand (and apply labels to) the world around us. These same symbolic forms allow us think about objects that are not physically present and also to express these thoughts through verbal communication.
It always amazes me that philosophical, anthropological and psychological concepts can so beautifully connect with one another, and the idea of symbolic thinking is especially intriguing to me. Perhaps I shall do some more research about it and see what I uncover.
In the meantime, I am enjoying watching my own baby girl (niece) as she learns to build her own schemes and symbolic thinking to her world. Just last week, I was able to speak with her on the phone for the first time. Perhaps it is something we usually take for granted, but the ability to understand that the voice coming from the phone belongs to a person who is not visibly present is a powerful testament to the human ability of symbolic thinking. Even if her vocabulary did only consist of "Hai!" "Bai!" and "Iwuvoo!" *melts*
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