Fire and Knowledge

Here is John Marstall’s response–and a most excellent response it is.

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response [you are here]
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response

John’s Response

Josh,

This is exactly the kind of discussion I was intending to provoke. Thanks for taking the time to consider my argument at length and present these counterpoints.

I want to reiterate that I am, in fact, very sympathetic to Postman’s emphasis on the value of the written and spoken word. I said that I don’t disagree with Postman in general, and I stand by that. Imagery typically does not inhabit the same realm of discourse as do typography and the spoken word. What I am offering, or attempting to offer, is not a refutation of that claim but an exception. The reach of this exception is not yet fully understood. It may be a small exception, or it may turn out to be quite large. Either way, I do not consider myself to be overthrowing Postman’s arguments — because, in general, his concern for well-reasoned discourse is an excellent rule of thumb. (As you point out, we could not be having this discussion in icons; at least, not with the present state of visual language being what it is.)

If I were feeling very ambitious, I might choose to quibble just a bit with the claim that the illiterate cannot be as rational and intellectual as persons of letters. Reason is not a product of any communication medium or technology; it is something innately human, and I would want to believe that thoughtful individuals in pre-literate societies were every bit as capable of forming and comprehending arguments as any professor of literature is today. Of course, the illiterate still have access to the tools of spoken language; but even acknowledging that, I would want to assert that reason is the underlying faculty, and is expressed or worked out in the form of language. I expect you would probably agree with this; I am simply adding a clarification to your claim.

This clarification becomes important when we shift from thinking about human words to considering the divine Word. The original Greek expression, used of Jesus, is actually logos ; which means something like “reason” or “ordering principle,” — not necessarily a spoken utterance or set of written symbols per se. I mention this because the truth of Jesus-as-the-Word is sometimes heralded as a basis for bibliocentrism, or book-centeredness, when in my opinion it simply doesn’t require that. It points strongly to logocentrism, sure — but in the sense of logos as reason and not merely as certain word forms. The early church, after all, did quite well in its limited literacy.

Note also that Jesus is the Word incarnate; as God’s first and final Word to us, it’s worth pointing out that Jesus was visible as well as audible. He could be perceived as a body; but more than that, he could be witnessed as an actor in history. His actions told us something about God, even without verbal articulation. Something akin to this kind of signification is what I have in mind when I am working in the realm of icons — demonstrative, rather than expository.

However, if this is true, something is wrong with your assertion that only words can communicate propositional content. Jesus proposed a way of life in the way that he lived. Intentionally or not, I do this for my own friends and for my children. You are doing it every day for the people around you. Choosing one course of action over another means that you put your stamp of approval on that choice; it is a message in a wordless medium, and it’s a far from insignificant part of what we “say” to others. The proposition expressed is, “This is the way to live.”

What I am suggesting is the possibility of meaningful communication without an easily identifiable syntax. However, you can reject this possibility and still agree that visual language can be cognitive. This is because there is an identifiable syntax in visual language. I went over a few examples in my article, but I’ll just reiterate one: The largest part of the icon is the most conceptually central. Smaller parts represent concepts which modify or derive from the main element. Analogously, we can think of these as icon “subjects” and “predicates,” though I expect the comparison is not exact. The example I gave was two inverted icons: one a larger document “badged” with a smaller person, or user; and the other a larger user badged with a smaller document.

These two icons, while composed of the same images, mean demonstrably different things. In fact, when I first posted my article, I had accidentally reversed the two images. So in my exposition I was referring to the first icon as if it were the second, and vice versa. The interpretations I offered for each design were therefore incorrect — and one of my readers recognized the error. This person wrote to say that my explanations of the icons were completely wrong, and hadn’t I got something reversed? Indeed, that was exactly the case; and I was able to correct my mistake. What’s extremely interesting about this exchange is that we both knew I had made a mistake. We both recognized that the visual configurations required different meanings than the ones I had apparently offered.

In short, we both recognized the same visual syntax.

Now, if this is true, then most of your counter-argument is based on a wrong assumption. You wrote:

“1) they [images] do not have syntax, therefore 2) they cannot communicate propositional truth which 3) makes it impossible to refute any assertions, because it does not have assertions. And without making assertions, 4) they cannot communicate anything abstractly. Hence images 5) do not cultivate the “higher reasoning” skills that words do.”

I agree with the logic of your deductions there (with the possible exception of deriving #2 from #1, as above); but I deny that the initial premise is actually true. Images certainly can have a syntax, and — in the case of icons — probably often do. That this syntax is less well understood than written or spoken syntax does not mean it isn’t there. It simply means designers and academics have their work cut out for them in taking visual language further. We need to explore what areas might be well-served by ideography; and what areas will always require verbal discourse. We need to catalog what visual language conventions are already well-established, and guide new ones into common usage. For me, this is something of an exciting new frontier. The endeavor may well not go anywhere; but then again, it might.

That there can be a syntax to ideography also suggests the possibility of visual abstraction. You quote a passage from Amusing Ourselves to Death, concerning the particularity of images. In it, Postman says, “Photography is a language that speaks only in particularities. Its vocabulary of images is limited to concrete representation. Unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world, except as we use language itself to convert the image to idea.” (Later in the passage, Postman seems to show he is talking about imagery in general, with photography acting as a representation of a wider medium.)

I find this to be a remarkably weak argument, and I wonder if it only makes sense to Postman because he is so committed to the superiority of spoken and written discourse. It is definitely true that one can take a photograph of that tree or that person, and mean nothing more by the result than a suggestion of the specific thing itself. However, it’s also true that we use images to stand in for general classes of things all the time. The geometric woman leading her angular child by the hand on the roadsign seen at a school crossing is not intended to refer to any particular mother, nor the child to any particular student. These objects simply mean “parent” and “child,” and are easily understood in that general sense. This, of course, is the kind of abstract communication icon designers engage in every day.

(Nor are photographs excluded from working in this way. I often see photos of mountains or trees located in other areas of the world and, having no idea where the photograph was taken, understand the subjects as “mountains” or “trees.” One also sees photos of crowds meant to stand in for “people,” “mankind,” “diversity,” “community,” and so on. Photos of businesspeople are used to suggest “the business world.” In fact, this is exactly the kind of use for which stock photography exists. The particular subject is interchangeable; it’s the concept that the user of such photos is after. That the intended meaning suggests itself as a range of ideas rather than as a single word is unproblematic — that’s simply the difference between an ideogram and a logogram. This use of images of particular things in abstract ways seems to me to be such a commonplace occurrence as to be incontrovertible.)

This brings us to your assertion that “There is no possible way that an icon representing truth can match a propositional statement of what truth is.” However, I’m pretty sure I made a good stab at doing exactly that. You may contend that my propositional statement was wrong, or that I articulated it badly. Nonetheless, the proposition I was putting forward, visually, seems to me to be very obvious from the art. The design is a larger triangle, with latitudinal and longitudinal lines — such as one would see on a globe — accompanied by a smaller copy of the same, appearing to rise from the original.

The intended proposition, of course, is none other than the very quote you drew from Phiip Kenneson: “Truth is merely the word for the way the world really is, which we are trying to picture or mirror with our knowledge.”

Thanks again for your thoughtful response.

John