Think of the word "cat"

Alix Spiegel at NPR asks us to think about symbols:

In order to have language, any language, you need to be able to think symbolically.
Think of the word "cat."

Even though the written word C-A-T looks nothing like a cat, and the spoken word "cat" sounds nothing like a cat sounds, when someone says the word out loud, you're able to conjure up an image.

Language, says Alison Brooks, an anthropology professor at George Washington University, is entirely composed of these arbitrary symbols.

"Every sound that comes out of my mouth has some kind of arbitrary meaning assigned to it," she says. "I could just as well be talking to you in another language and making totally different sounds and saying the same thing."

The miracle is that these arbitrary sounds — these symbols — allow us to see what's going on in other people's minds and also allows us to share what's going on in ours.

For example, if I say the word "bead" you immediately have a picture in your mind of what I'm talking about. If I said beads, you'd generate a slightly different picture in your mind, that I have made your mind form. If I said glass beads — using an adjective to modify the concept — you'd immediately see something different than if I said gold beads. In this way, I make you think in your mind of a thing that I have in my mind.

And once we have this ability for symbolic thought and language then all kinds of things become possible. Through language we can pass down what we've learned, organize larger and larger groups of people who can do more and more complex things like build bridges and schools and computers and practically everything else in modern life.