Symbolization

In the fundamental notion of symbolization - mystical, practical or mathematical, it

makes no difference—we have the keynote of all humanistic problems. In it lies a new

conception of “mentality,” that may illumine questions of life and consciousness, instead

of obscuring them as traditional “scientific methods” have done. If it is indeed a

generative idea, it will beget tangible methods of its own, to free the deadlocked

paradoxes of mind and body, reason and impulse, autonomy and law, and will overcome

the checkmated arguments of an earlier age by discarding their very idiom and shaping

their equivalents in more significant phrase. The philosophical study of symbols is not a

technique borrowed from other disciplines, not even from mathematics; it has arisen in

the fields that the great advance of learning have left fallow. Perhaps it holds the seed of

a new intellectual harvest, to be reaped in the next season of the human understanding.

(P. 25)

Suzanne Langer: Philosophy in a New Key:

A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art