Are symbols portals to reality?
Considering symbolic realism.
Re-Assembling Reality #17e, by David A. Palmer
In this essay, we add symbolic realism to our list of realisms, following our discussions of ontological, epistemic, semantic and subjective realisms. Symbolic realism considers that a symbol has an intrinsic meaning that can tell us something about reality. Conversely, symbolic anti-realism is the idea that symbols don’t have any intrinsic meaning: the meanings of symbols are purely arbitrary, and they can only tell us something about the minds of the people who are using the symbols.
Let’s consider the Adinkra symbols used by the Bono people of Ghana. For those of us who have not learned these symbols, they are just arbitrary squiggles and drawings with no intrinsic meaning. There is nothing in the symbol that can jump to your mind and correctly tell you what it means.
If a meaning does come to your mind when you look at the images, you should take it like a Rorschach test in psychology: maybe you think that image no. 8 means ‘comb’ and that image no. 14 means ‘love’, but your interpretations tell us something about you rather than about a reality designated by the symbol. You live in a culture in which ‘love’ is symbolised by the heart, and in which the heart is typically represented with a shape that looks like image no. 14. In fact, among those who use the Adinkra symbols, image no. 14 means “turn back and fetch it”.
There is no way for us to know the meaning of a symbol without being told by someone else. This observation supports a symbolic anti-realist perspective, which tells us that the source of the meaning is always in the minds of humans, rather than in reality itself.
Among the images presented above, the one with a meaning closest to ‘love’ is no. 2 — Akoma Ntoaso — which depicts four linked hearts, and which means ‘understanding’ and ‘agreement’, as well as the ‘immortality of the soul’. This symbol combines four Akoma symbols, which are similar to standard Western ‘heart’ symbols. But in the Adinkra system, the heart symbol means ‘patience and tolerance’ — ‘get a heart’ means ‘be patient’.
All of these variations seem to confirm the symbolic anti-realist position that the meanings of symbols are arbitrary. But it’s not always so simple. Sometimes there can be less-than-arbitrary connections between symbols and their meanings.
Let’s look at another Adinkra symbol associated with ‘love,’ which is odo nnyew fie kwan, which means ‘those led by love will never lose their way.’ While this symbol is not identical to the Western symbol for ‘heart’, it’s not too much of a stretch to consider that its shape is derived from the shape of the human heart.
We can see, then, that this cluster of Adinkra symbols, which cover meanings associated with love, understanding, agreement, patience and the soul, are all associated with the ‘heart.’ It’s interesting that both the graphic representation of “heart”, and its range of meanings, though not identical with common Western representations, present similarities and overlap. And the same could be said of symbols of the “heart” in other cultures, such as the Chinese character 心 xin which is derived from a visual representation of the heart, and whose range of meanings includes ‘mind’, ‘feeling’, ‘intention’, and ‘centre’.
If the meanings of symbols were purely arbitrary, we might expect to find these meanings associated with any body part, or even any thing, in different cultures. But in none of these cultures is love symbolized by an elbow, a toe, or an anteater. This observation seems to undermine the symbolic anti-realist perspective: perhaps there is a non-arbitrary connection between the heart and those meanings.
In the example of Adinkra and Chinese heart symbols, there are two possibly non-arbitrary connections between the symbol and the meaning. First, some of the symbols have some resemblance with a physical heart: the symbol looks like what it symbolises. This is what the philosopher Charles Sanders Pearce called an iconic sign.
Second, in many cultures, the “heart” is associated with feelings, emotions, intention, love, caring, and so on, while such notions are rarely associated with other parts of the body. These meanings have nothing to do with a physical resemblance between the heart symbol and the heart. If we take a physical heart out of a human body, there is nothing in its shape, appearance, or function to suggest any connection whatsoever to notions of love, understanding, or feeling. This seems to prove that the link between the thing and the meaning is utterly arbitrary — an anti-realist position. From a symbolic anti-realist position, given the arbitrariness of symbols, to gain correct knowledge of the heart requires us to eliminate all symbolic associations in our mind, while observing only a heart as it exists in itself, independently of any of our own ideas about it. Cardiology, not poetry, can tell us the truth about the heart.
But the fact that similar symbolic meanings exist in societies vastly distant from each other, may support a different view: that there is more to the ‘heart’ than its physical materiality. From this perspective, the connection between the heart, feelings, love, patience, or centredness is not arbitrary: by reflecting on the symbolic meanings of the heart, we may learn something about a reality that extends beyond the physical organ. This perspective is symbolic realism.
When we speak of symbolic realism as non-arbitrary connections between symbols and their meanings, we refer not to physical or iconic resemblance, but to this level of “deeper meanings” of symbols. In symbolic realism, these “deeper meanings” are not merely arbitrary imaginations or cultural constructions: they actually tell us something about reality.
Symbols in science and religion
Both science and religion are systems of symbols. In fact, one could say that the basic training in both science and religion is to learn how to use, understand, combine, create, and communicate symbols. In each scientific discipline, you need to learn how to read and write a specific type of specialized language.
Ultimately, science boils down to linguistic statements. We tend to think of science in terms of acts of observation — but take two people who spend hours observing an anthill: both of them see the same things, but the scientist is the one who converts those observations into written statements, and crafts them into an article. The one who observes ants scientifically is the one who not only observes ants but also reads what others have written about ants, and writes about them himself. To do science is to work with symbols.
And of course, to do religion is also to work with symbols. It doesn’t matter what discipline, or what religion: if you can’t use symbols, you can’t do either science or religion. Science and religion are both essentially symbolic activities.
But do these symbols refer to anything real outside of themselves? What kind of reality are they actually symbolising?
Mathematical symbols
Mathematics is usually considered to be the ideal symbol system in modern science, which sets the tone and standard for scientific communication. Nowadays, we use mathematics primarily as an instrument for counting and calculating. When we use numbers, we use them to represent something else: counting the number of dollars, counting the number of people, calculating viral loads… We’re trained into the idea that mathematics consists in doing mental manipulations about something else. We use numbers as a representational system. If I speak of 55 marbles, the number 55 is merely a representation of those 55 objects. The number 55 has no meaning other than what it is representing. The numbers, in and of themselves, are meaningless: they don’t represent anything.
But, if we look at numbers and their intrinsic relationships which form mathematical laws, we certainly can’t say that they’re arbitrary: no matter the culture, no matter the language, if I have two apples in my left hand and two apples in my right, altogether I have four apples. The equation 2+2=4 is true no matter where and by whom it is spoken, and no matter if the numbers are referring to apples, snails, thumb tacks or bobsleds. The formal expressions of mathematics dispense with these referents: it seems that mathematical symbols are self-referential.
The mathematical world seems to refer only to itself — it refers to a mathematical reality. We can discover more of this reality by engaging in mathematical experiments and calculations, without making any reference to everyday reality. The mathematics remain true even if our everyday reality is much messier than the world of mathematics. The equation 2+2=4 is not merely a statement about apples: the symbols point to a reality intrinsic to the numbers themselves.
In the modern usage of mathematics, we don’t consider that this mathematical reality has any deeper meaning than the literal meaning of the numbers. We can say that the symbols have a thin or shallow meaning. But in many civilizations — such as in the Islamic, Indian and Chinese worlds, and also in cosmologies prevalent in European culture until the 17th century, numbers themselves are considered to be full of meaning. Each number does not simply signify a quantity, but it also has its own quality. In this conception, every number has an intrinsic quality — it has a thick or deep meaning — that tells us something about reality.
In our discussion of symbolic realism, we are primarily interested in whether deep meanings can point to something real.
Let’s consider the meanings of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from a symbolic realist perspective.
Among ancient Greeks, starting with the Pythagoreans, and later in the civilizations of the Islamic world, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was considered that the number one, also known as the monad, signifies the idea of the first, the essence, the foundation, unity, God, and the good. Represented as a single point, this number is the seed of all beings. It’s the perfection of the circle. Any number multiplied by one is itself, and any number divided by one is itself. The number one, then, in relation to other numbers, preserves the identity of every other number, or of anything it encounters.[1]
And then we have the number two, the dyad. Here, we move from unity into otherness, from 1 to 2. Oneness becomes split into two, generating otherness, represented as two points connected by a line. And so the Greeks used to say that the number two is audacious and daring, because it dares to separate itself from the one. And yet at the same time, two is anguished because it has separated from the one and it wants to go back to the original oneness. This description encapsulates the quality of duality, of separation, and the pain of that separation. The dyad divides and unites; it repels and attracts.
Chinese cosmology seems to revolve around the number two, through the notions of yin and yang. Whenever there is a group of two, they are not simply a quantity — they are in a relation. As soon as two people or two elements come into relation with each other, all kinds of things start happening in qualitative ways. They might have the attraction of love, they might repel each other, they might start negotiating, they might start exchanging with each other. The number two expresses the qualities of two beings being in relation with each other. These can be the qualities of attraction, of love, of repulsion, of opposition, of conflict, or of reconciliation.
Then we have the triad, the number three, represented as a triangle. The triangle represents balance. It’s a polygon of stability and strength. The ancient geometers considered the quality of a triangle and saw that it’s the most stable of all the figures. In ancient China, a common symbol of three is the ding — a sacrificial tripod. With its three legs, it’s the most stable way to hold something up. We can also consider the triangular keystone in an arch, which is the most stable element in the structure, and holds up the entire archway. The number three thus has a triangular quality.
Four is associated with justice, wholeness and completion. There are four seasons, and four cardinal directions, which encompass the wholeness of the yearly cycle and of the space we live in. Four is the first number formed by the addition and multiplication of equals. Two plus two equals four, and two times two equals four. This signifies balance, justice, and the beauty of the perfection of the square that can be folded in two different ways.
The number five is symbolised by the pentad. Five is the form of the star, which was considered in the Renaissance to be the perfect form of the proportions of the human body.
We also find often strikingly similar ideas, with slight variations, in Chinese cosmology. For example, the great classic of Daoism, the Daodejing, states that “Dao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, and Three gives birth to the myriad beings.” These are not mere quantities, but qualities. The origin is Dao, which precedes number. Out of it arises oneness, which then divides into two. The two, as yin and yang, enter into relation with each other, just as male and female, and they give birth to the three; and from then onwards everything comes into being.
In these cosmologies, each number has a different intrinsic quality, which tells us something about the universe. Users of these cosmologies, as symbolic realists, consider the numbers to be symbols that point to something deeper about the reality of existence. Symbolic anti-realists, on the other hand, would consider that the Greeks and Chinese may have had interesting ideas on the meanings of numbers, but you can’t derive those meanings from the numbers themselves: the meanings come from people thinking and talking to each other about numbers.
Religious symbols
Much of the symbolism in literature and in religion acts in this way, in which the symbol teaches us about a deeper reality. The lotus, for example, expresses qualities of enlightenment, as it maintains its purity even as it grows out of muck. If you’re thinking about spiritual enlightenment and you reflect on the form and qualities of a lotus, you learn more about the meaning of enlightenment. So the symbol gives you knowledge of the reality of enlightenment. It is more than simply one thing standing for another.
Religious scriptures are replete with narratives. These stories can be interpreted literally or symbolically. Let’s consider the story, in the New Testament, of Jesus feeding the multitudes. In the story, there are thousands of followers of Jesus, and they’re very hungry. Jesus breaks five loaves of bread, and he is able to feed all of them.
“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves.Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
This story can be taken literally: Jesus physically broke five loaves of bread and turned them into enough to feed over 5000 people. It can also be taken symbolically: the story tells a spiritual truth. In one symbolic interpretation, Jesus is the Bread of Life; his presence and teachings are a spiritual bread that relieve our spiritual hunger and give life to the soul. The multitudes represent humanity in a state of spiritual hunger, and the words of Jesus assuage our hunger, giving us spiritual nourishment, health, and life. In this interpretation, the bread symbolises the spiritual food provided by Jesus. If we reflect on the story, every detail might give us hints on the nature of the spiritual life that is conferred by Jesus.
There’s a lot of debate both inside and outside of most religious traditions about symbolic interpretations of religious scripture. Some insist on literal interpretations, while others insist on symbolic interpretations. Within these debates, there’s often the presumption that the literalists are those with strong faith, while the symbolists have weaker convictions: if you give a symbolic interpretation, it’s mere metaphor, it’s mere symbolism — you don’t really believe in it.
Scriptural literalists often say that, but so do those who don’t believe in scripture at all. They might say that given that the stories are not true, people try to rescue their stories by emphasizing metaphors and symbols. Both the literalists and the non-believers agree that physical reality is the standard of truth to assess the validity of the symbols. The literalist believers consider that some things physically happened (such as Jesus feeding the multitudes, or his physical resurrection), while the non-believers don’t believe so.
Symbolic realism, however, is not a watered-down or liberal version of faith. For a symbolic realist, symbols are not mere symbols. The symbolism points to a deeper reality. Metaphor or symbol are not less than the physical event. And in some forms of symbolic realism, such as in the Platonic tradition, the physical reality itself is less real than the spiritual reality that symbols point to. Physical reality is a mere reflection of spiritual reality, which is expressed with symbols. In this understanding, the nourishment of the spiritual “bread” of Jesus is far more precious than the physical bread itself, and it’s available to anyone at anytime, unlike a physical loaf of bread. Symbols are thus mediators between the spiritual reality and its physical shadow, and they tell us something about a reality beyond the physical.
Religious stories can be given many different symbolic meanings. A symbolic anti-realist might consider all interpretations to be equal, since all interpretations are the arbitrary constructions of subjective minds rather than anything intrinsic to the symbols. But from a symbolic realist perspective, given that the symbols can give us access to the truth, it’s important to strive for an interpretation of the symbols that gives access to the reality they point to. Thus, some interpretations are better than others, because they bring us closer to the truth. Interpreting symbols is a mental and spiritual discipline that can be trained.
Symbolic realism is compatible with both literalist and non-literalist interpretations of scripture. There is no inherent opposition between these two perspectives. One can be a symbolic realist who sees the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes as having symbolic meaning, but that it also happened as a physical miracle. Or you could consider that it has symbolic meaning, but that it didn’t physically happen. One can also be a symbolic realist and be completely indifferent to whether or not the event happened physically. If the spiritual reality expressed through symbols is more real than physical reality, then understanding the spiritual meaning is more important than knowing what physically happened. Thus, the symbolic realist position is compatible with a wide range of literalist and non-literalist positions.
Symbolic realism and anti-realism in the humanities and social theory
Symbolic realism was prevalent in certain currents in the Western academic discipline of religious studies until the mid-20th century, as well as in some branches of analytic psychology and anthropology. Scholars such as Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell investigated the recurring themes in the symbolism of different religious traditions, mythology, and rituals, as well as in dreams and other forms of culture, and sought to understand what these symbols reveal to us about the human psyche, soul, or about the ultimate reality. This tradition of seeking for truth through symbolic archetypes can be traced back to Plato’s theory of ideal forms.
The critical social sciences, on the other hand, tend to be symbolic anti-realist, especially since the second half of the 20th century under the influence of post-structuralism and post-modernism. In sociology and anthropology, the dominant paradigm is that all symbols are ultimately arbitrary. They don’t tell us anything about intrinsic reality — they only tell about the people who use them — about the social reality in which the symbols have meaning. The meaning is in the eye of the beholder; any meaning of a symbol simply tells us about the person or the society that gives it meaning. And the production of meaning is a social process that’s embedded in power relations.
So if you’re studying Shakespeare, the Bible or any work of ancient or contemporary fiction, what you should look for is how the text is an expression of a social context, how it reveals the values, social structure and power relations of that society. There is no need to seek for the ‘deep meaning’ of these stories: the work of a social scientist is to reconstruct the social context within which the text and its meanings were elaborated and understood. How are meanings socially produced, and what are the power relations involved in the production of meaning? The production of symbols, in this view, is primarily a political process.
Symbolic anti-realism in religion
But symbolic anti-realism is not unique to the critical social sciences. Indeed, religions also have strong symbolic anti-realist currents. This is especially the case in those traditions that are typically called mystical, or in apophatic theology. The ultimate reality is completely beyond human understanding, and cannot be described with any word or symbol. Thus, any symbol is a veil between us and the ultimate reality.
This idea is stated explicitly in the first verse of the Daoist classic, the Daodejing:
道可道，非常道。
名可名，非常名。
The Dao that can be uttered is not the eternal Dao
The Name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
All symbols that can be uttered or named are not the ultimate symbol, the ultimate reality.
Similarly, in the Bible (1 Cor 2:9):
What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived…
The things of God cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be conceived.
Symbolic anti-realism can also be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the Baha’i Faith, among other traditions. It is core to many strands of theology and cosmology. This seems paradoxical, since, as we mentioned earlier, symbolic realism is also very important in religion. So in religion, there are strong traditions of both symbolic realism and symbolic anti-realism.
“The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”
― Chuang Tzu
[1] Our discussion of the symbolism of numbers is derived from Hobgood, “Pythagoras and the Mystery of Numbers”. http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa06/Hobgood/Pythagoras.html and https://www.cambridgemaths.org/blogs/revering-our-mathematics/
This essay and the Re-Assembling Reality Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9061 Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life, with the support of the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum and the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
