Our modern world is full of symbols; they surround us every day. A compact form of communication, symbols convey a lot of information with a few lines and shapes. One can understand complicated written instructions more easily when accompanied by images. Studies have demonstrated that babies recognize images and symbols of people like “mommy” that are familiar and important to them. The Human Face, a film by John Cleese, reveals the results of studies that were done with sheep, and images of other sheep - some that were part of, and some that were strangers to the flock – familiar sheep were recognized by the test subject sheep, and strangers ignored. The brain is configured to store and recall familiar images. This is necessary for survival.
Toddlers’ picture-books are the
foundation of reading comprehension. Children’s textbooks are filled with
colorful images to help them learn.
A good example is a small book,
published in German in 1906, and titled Etwas von den Wurzelkindern (The
Root Children). The colorful pictures in this little book teach the cycle
of plants as they bloom in spring and summer, then die off in autumn,
their seeds and roots hibernating underground during winter, until the
following spring. Mother Earth cares for the plants, symbolized using
cute small children. Their winter home, for they are seeds that sleep all
winter, is under the ground where they sit with candles, sleep, and wait for
spring. When it arrives the children troop to the surface in beautifully
colored dresses to play and grow in summer’s sun and warmth. When autumn
arrives they return to Mother Earth down into the soil, their winter home.
This sequence of pictures tells the story even if one cannot understand the few
German words accompanying each page.
Although people acknowledge
that contemporary symbolism conveys mathematics and science, a scholar of
symbolism, de Santillana, states that:
He (the modern reader) does not think of the possibility
that equally relevant knowledge might once have been expressed in everyday
language. He never suspects such a possibility, although the visible
accomplishments of ancient cultures - to mention only the pyramids, or
metallurgy - should be a cogent reason for concluding that serious and intelligent
men were at work behind the stage, men who were bound to have used a technical
terminology.
Some symbols are so commonplace
we have developed automatic associations to them, the brain learning in early
childhood to translate meaning. Images, therefore, take on a language all their
own. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a very familiar expression, but
if we think about it - which words? How many words accurately
describe a dog? If two people read or hear the same description, do they
imagine the same thing? How often do we attend a movie after reading the book
on which it was based, and thought, “That’s not at all what I pictured!”
Images depict for us visual
properties that cannot be accurately verbalized. Symbols depict complex
concepts that would take volumes of written language to explain. “A
picture is worth a thousand words” is a proverb reflecting the idea that
complex stories can be described with a single image, or that an image may be
more influential than a substantial amount of text. This also applies to the
process of visualization where large amounts of data must be absorbed quickly.
Fred R. Barnard, in the advertising trade journal Printers'
Ink, used this phrase to promote the use of images in advertisements that
appeared on the sides of streetcars. The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad
entitled, One Look Is Worth A Thousand Words. Russian writer
Ivan Turgenev wrote (in Fathers and Sons, 1862), "A picture
shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."
The quote is sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who said: "Un
bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours" (a good sketch is better
than a long speech).
This is not to say that images
negate the necessity of words; the combination of words and pictures is vital
in communication. An enormous amount of history was preserved and passed on
through thousands of years using visual symbols and oral tradition. From these
traditions many symbol systems have developed, some esoteric, some
exoteric in nature. Learning symbolism may start with babies, but it can
be a lifetime of adult academic study. It has been my passion for decades to
find the context for symbols, decode them, and to share that information with
my readers.
Michelle Snyder, M. Phil, Symbolist
http://whiteknightstudio.blogspot.com/
