Worldview Analysis, Part 4
The Second Component of Symbols
(avg. read time: 1–2 mins.)
Symbols, what Geertz describes as, “any object, act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a vehicle for a conception,”1 are that which communicate by representing and signifying, usually in visual or auditory form (or mental impressions of the same). They represent and signify by their qualities of unification/synthesis (bringing together many potential meanings or layers of meaning) and condensation—of both meaning and responses to the same—into a singular symbol. Some symbols, namely icons, may further draw their representative capacity from their resemblance to what they signify. Other symbols, especially metonyms and synecdoches, draw their representative capacity from their association or accompaniment with something else signified (e.g., smoke signifying fire). Specific symbols may come to be indelibly associated with particular communities, movements, or ideas, but the chief set of symbols that every worldview requires for communication is the set of symbols known as “language” in its multifarious forms.2 Worldview symbols work much like maps, using symbols to represent reality and orient the map-reader to it in a more manageable fashion than looking at the “territory” (in this case, the world) from the ground-level.
As with narratives, the construction and comprehension of symbols are endemic to humans, how we think, and how we act. Naugle observes, “A defining trait of persons as persons who possess logos is the ability to use one thing to stand for another thing (aliquid stans pro aliquo), to section off one part of reality and employ it to refer to, mean, or stand for another part of reality.”3 As indicated above, this trait is also an intrinsic function of language, the primary means by which people communicate worldviews. Indeed, some worldviews—particularly those of Jews, Christians, and Muslims—maintain that this human capacity of making and understanding symbols is a result of human nature itself being symbolic, as humans are image-bearers of God.
In terms of worldview formation, symbols, including language in particular, are crucial for orienting people to the world around them. But as I noted before in my entry on Santa Claus, there are a variety of responses to what happens when a symbol is challenged or becomes problematic. Sometimes, people engage in worldview maintenance to preserve a symbol and their preexisting associations with it in the face of said challenge. Other times, people participate in the deconstruction of a symbol, deeming it no longer fit for the purpose they previously associated it with. Still other times, people regard symbols as too important to leave in the rubble of deconstruction and see instead a need for reconstruction, maintaining the symbol but giving it new associations, new content from how they had thought about it. Of course, worldview transformation also involves adopting new orienting symbols as part of one’s symbolic universe.
Geertz, Interpretation, 91.
Cf. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 91.
Naugle, Worldview, 292. For more on this point, see Naugle, Worldview, 292–97 (italics original).